The New Yorker Radio Hour - R.F.K., Jr., and the Central Park Bear, with Clare Malone

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone’s Profile, What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want? sheds light on Kennedy’s position in this Presidential race—and it also solves a ten-year-old mystery about a dead bear cub found in Central Park. On Sunday, Kennedy tried to get ahead of the publication of Malone’s story by relating the bizarre scheme (involving roadkill, falconry, dangerous bike lanes, and more) in a video that he released on social media. David Remnick talks with Malone about Kennedy’s highly unusual candidacy, and why he’s staying in the race. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A week ago, we were getting ready at the New Yorker to publish a piece by staff writer Claire Malone. And I started getting text messages that something kind of odd was going on. A bizarre twist to a nearly decade-old mystery in Central Park, where a bear cub was the stuff were dead. independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has now confessed to putting it there. In a video that was apparently intended to blunt the impact of a negative news story that had not yet come out. He tells Razan Barr that he was responsible for a dead bear cub that turned up in Central Park in 2014. Luckily, the story died after a while, and it stayed dead for a decade.

I'm the New Yorker somehow found out about it. Claire Malone joins us. Now, Claire, you just published a profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But Kennedy tried to get ahead of your story the day before publication by explaining on video, via social media, a certain incident that you covered in your reporting. Then he shared the video, which appears to be shot in a kitchen. He's in a kitchen. and he is telling it to Roseanne Barr.

And what is Roseanne Barr doing in that kitchen? My best guests, being a close Robert F. Kennedy, junior watcher these past few months, is that he and Roseanne were taping a podcast sometime in the last week or so. Okay. And that also coincided with the time which we were fact-checking my profile. Okay. So he's gotten a call from your fact-checkers telling him,

what? Well, he's gotten a call for me because, you know, in the reporting process, once you've reported something out, then you have to go to the individual for Comet. So I called Bobby Kennedy the other week and sort of put the story to him. And on the phone, he did not tell me this. He sort of declined to go much further than saying, maybe that's where I got my brainworm. Right. But he didn't deny the story. He did not deny the story. No. So we give him credit for something. Yes. And then this video was posted the day before my story was supposed to come out. And I think this was his kind of trying to get out ahead of it or trying to pre-spin it, as they might say. But his version of the story

is pretty similar to the one that you published in The New Yorker. So for those few lonely souls on the planet who have not yet read the piece or watched Bobby Kennedy video on Twitter, what exactly is the story at hand? I mean, the general gist of the story is, Ten years ago in 2014 when he was 60 years old. Right. Bobby Kennedy. A grown-ass man, as we now say. Your words not mine, David.

He was taking a group of people out for a falconry event. He's a lifelong falconer. He's a master falconer. If you read my piece, he's sort of lifelong love of animals in a very sort of interesting, unique way, is a thread. But anyway, he's a falconer. And going to the falconry event, he came across a dead bear. In his version of the story... In upstate New York.

In upstate New York, yes. In his version of the story, a woman hit it. And he decided to pick the bear up, put it in his trunk. He took a few pictures of it. Of him with the dead bear, which we published. Which we published. And then at some point, later that evening, he has a really great idea. He goes into Central Park and...

sets up, I guess, a tableau of the baby bear, a 44-pound dead baby bear. He wants to set up a tableau with a bear and a bicycle that makes it look as if the bear is being hit by a bicycle. As if a bicycle hitting a bear would kill the bear. Correct, yes. And again, in his telling to Roseanne, he says it's because there had been a spate of, I guess, bike lane accidents in New York about a decade ago. People are badly injured. Every day it was in the press. And so I thought, I wasn't drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea. And I said, I had an old bike in my car that somebody had asked me to get rid of it.

I said, let's go put the bear in the Central Park and we'll make it look like he got in by it. It's funny for people. Now, according to a speech, and we discovered this in later reporting, vigorous journalistic search, According to a speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s daughter, what? In 2006, she gave a sort of little... This is Kick Kennedy. Who went by Kate Kennedy at that point. She's giving a sort of student address at her graduation,

and she says, I love my parents. My father taught me many things. To skin dead animals, never to pass roadkill without putting it in your car, to plunge yourself into any body of water before testing the temper. So anyway, and we should say in the video, he says that the reason why he picked up the bear and sort of put it in his trunk is that he was thinking of skinning it later for meat. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. So this piece ran how many words, Claire? I think close to 10. I actually 10,000 words.

So in around 10,000 words, there's other stuff in it. There's a two-paragraph passage about the dead bear story. And why did Kennedy think that the dead bear story would get a lot more attention than lots of material about bad behavior as a young man having to do with drugs and womanizing and worse, and that is not limited to when he was young? But he's wanted to get out in front of this. Yeah, it's interesting. And although I have tried to put myself inside the head of Bobby Kennedy for the past few months, I can't put myself in the last few months. I can't put myself inside his head on that one, you know, perhaps because it had been unreported previously. And the piece itself kind of tracks.

It has a lot of sort of very tragic things, both having to do with his life. I mean, his father was assassinated when he was 14. He had a huge drug problem. His second wife committed suicide during a very bitter divorce. I mean, there's a lot of dark stuff, actually, in the profile. So in some ways the bear incident is, I think, one of many things. that are in the piece that I think paint the portrait of, in some ways he's a very talented person, charming, charismatic is how people describe him.

But also, you know, there is a weird element. There's some weirdness. I guess weird is the word of the moment, I guess, is that guise. But I think we can agree that this incident is genuinely kind of weird. And, you know, it's an odd story, right? Let's explore a couple of the oddities. Yeah. So he shoves the bear in the car,

He relays on, and he doesn't tell you, sadly, but he tells Twitter and Roseanne Barr that he was going to skin the bear and use the meat to eat later. And then we cut to the fact that he's then going out to dinner at Peter Lugers. Yeah, a steakhouse. And you'd think he'd be pretty full after that and in no mood to skin a bear and put it in the fridge. Well, it also turns out in the video, per his telling that actually he was going to go to the airport, too. So he didn't want to leave the dead bear in the trunk of his car, which is why he dumped it in Central Park. So it's a scheduling problem. You know, it seems to me that the Kennedy candidacy has had different phases.

Yeah. And for a while there was the spoiler phase. They're really serious. Will he be Ralph Nader in one way or another or some or Ross Perrault? Have we reached the comic depths of this campaign? Where are we now? I mean, I think he's, you know, as one poster, who I talked to in the spring, he sort of, when Kennedy was polling pretty well, anywhere between 10 and 15 percent, depending on what poll you look at.

Which is the most since Rospero in 92. Correct. Yes, correct. And that pollster said to me, listen, he's going to end up being more like Gary Johnson in 2016. Gary Johnson ended up getting 3% of the popular vote. And the idea was basically in this election, especially when Biden was the candidate for the Democrats. Everyone was, it was, you know, everyone had negative views on both candidates. Traditional Democratic Party voters didn't want to vote for. for Biden. And I think what's really turned things for the Kennedy, you know, polling numbers is there are these younger black or Latino voters who might be saying, actually, I don't want to vote for an independent party candidate now. I feel more comfortable voting for Harris. Or there's also just the idea that the closer we get to the actual election, the more people, even if they say, oh, I'm an independent, the closer they actually get to, am I actually going to vote for this third party candidate in the the end of the day. Do you think he might hurt Trump? Yeah, I mean, listen, he's a, he is still an entity to be dealt with in, in these, let's say, seven or so swing states. And he's on those

ballots? Well, he's not in the ballot everywhere, but, you know, he's, he could, he could make a difference in a few states, and there are still, we're in the period where he could still get in the ballot in a couple of key places. So there's a potential for him to rock the boat a bit. He is, at this point, I think, seen more as a spoiler for Trump. So in the past month, month. We've seen Trump kind of make outreach to Kennedy, essentially, I think, floating, would you ever drop out and maybe be interested in a cabinet position? And I do think for all the obvious oddity and farce associated with the bear story, I mean, Kennedy is a huge following among a certain segment of the population. He is a huge ability to disseminate misinformation

about vaccines. And I think if Trump wins the election, it's not a crazy. he thought to think that perhaps Kennedy could have some influential position. And even if he didn't get a spot in the administration or in Trump's orbit, he still has, you know, pretty big reach digitally and a pretty big set of followers. So he's certainly an odd figure in American life, but not without power. Claire, he's not going to win the election. I think it's pretty obvious. What's his goal staying in? Yeah, you know, I do think that there was a period during the election when, he did think that he could win.

I have a sense that more and more he's potentially becoming a realist about that. I think he is probably eager to have a post in a Trump administration or Harris administration, I should say. The campaign manager, Amarilis Fox Kennedy, told me that he would also accept any offers from a Harris administration. So I think at this point he probably wants some sort of official... Affirmation. Yes, yes, position. a piece of power. And we should end by saying

the last piece of Kennedy merch to appear on his website is a Kennedy for President teddy bear. A teddy bear. That's right. Lean in. Claire Malone, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Claire Malone's profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dead bear and all is at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of W. NYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, Ursula Summer, and Alicia Zuckerman, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.