RFK Jr. Forced to Apologize to His Own Family for That Super Bowl Ad

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Super Bowl ad may have reached millions of Americans, but it also reached his family—who weren’t too jazzed to have their images leveraged as fodder for his dimming bid for the White House.

During Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, a super PAC supporting the independent candidate aired a familiar commercial: a 1960 John F. Kennedy campaign ad. Except the face behind the iconic “Kennedy for Me” jingle wasn’t JFK. Instead, it was his vaccine-rejecting, conspiracy-touting nephew, RFK Jr., hocking his dead uncle’s legacy and riding on the family name for 30 seconds of fame.

“My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces—and my Mother’s,” wrote Bobby Shriver, referring to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, in a statement that his brother signed off on. “She would be appalled by his deadly health care views. Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA.”

“She strongly supported my health care work at @ONECampaign & @RED which he opposes,” Shriver added, referring to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations dedicated to the end of extreme poverty and finding a cure for AIDS.

RFK Jr., meanwhile, chalked the mishap up to a genuine mistake, claiming he wasn’t able to sign off on the ad due to Federal Election Commission rules.

“I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” RFK Jr. wrote late on Sunday night. “The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign. FEC rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God bless you.”

But that might not be all true. Even though federal law technically prohibits super PACs from coordinating with or donating to candidates and their campaigns, there aren’t exactly any super PAC cops preventing them from doing so. The FEC, in practice, remains unable to investigate claims of fraud thanks to extremely limiting parameters that fail as soon as “allied outside groups … simply converse with one another,” according to TNR’s Jason Linkins.

And his sentiment might not be all there, either. At the time of publishing, RFK Jr. still had the ad pinned to the top of his X profile, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Ted Cruz is taking the law into his own hands to make sure he isn’t caught in another paparazzi snafu.

On Thursday, the Senate advanced a piece of legislation that would give politicians extra security to whisk them through airport security lines, minimizing their exposure to the U.S. public.

The language of Cruz’s proposal would require the Transportation Security Administration to offer lawmakers, federal judges, Cabinet members, and some of their family and staff the privilege of expedited screenings and security escorts—though other agencies, like local airport police, could also be called in to assist.

Unsurprisingly, the TSA responded that the task would be too much of a burden, while a nonprofit representing airport police said that it was already too underfunded to take on such an initiative. The effort would also, ultimately, pull police away from “crime suppression and security functions at airports, which is our fundamental duty,” according to the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network’s Kevin Murphy, who spoke with Politico.

“It has been a long road, with ‘delays’ and a little bit of ‘turbulence,’ but I am glad we have reached a compromise and are marking up this bill,” Cruz said before the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday.

“This bipartisan bill will help ensure the FAA can improve at its core mission of keeping the flying public safe,” Cruz noted in an emailed statement to The Hill. “With the aviation industry facing serious challenges, this legislation charts a course to address many of them while also modernizing and transforming the FAA’s operations.”

It’s probably not a stretch to assume that Cruz got the idea after he was caught catching a flight to Cancun, bailing on his constituents—and his dog—during a historic winter storm in 2021 that shut down power in large swaths of Texas.

In Florida, alongside lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic, kindergarteners may also soon be required to learn about the “threat of communism in the United States.”

Republicans’ House Bill 1349 would require that public students in grades K-12 learn about the history of communism. Specifically, that includes the “increasing threat of communism in the United States and our allies through the 20th Century.” Under current state law, kids don’t receive lessons about communism until the seventh grade.

Should the bill pass, students as young as 5 could soon be forced to learn about “the history of domestic communist movements and their tactics within the United States, the philosophy and lineages of communist thought, including Marxism, [and] foreign communist movements of the 20th century, the atrocities committed by such movements, and the threat they posed to the United States and its allies.”

The bill would also create a “Communism Education Task Force,” with members appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, to shape curriculum and standards for instruction on the history of communism.

This isn’t just some crazy proposal. After all, Republicans have a trifecta hold over the state’s government, with majorities in the state House and Senate as well as a Republican governor who, having lost a shot at the White House, now has renewed vigor in his personal crusade against all things woke.

A parallel bill, Senate Bill 1264, is moving forward in the Senate, increasing the chances that it could land on DeSantis’s desk before the end of the legislative session on March 8.

The House version is more extreme, however, also requiring kids to learn about the threats of “cultural Marxism.” Many Democrats pushed back on the inclusion, including Representative Susan Valdes.

“Cultural Marxism, isn’t that a very politically charged terminology that’s being used?” Valdes asked. “I don’t know, is it?” James Buchanan, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, replied.

If it passes, the curriculum change would take effect in the 2026–2027 school year.

As The Miami Herald noted in its coverage of the bill, starting this year, Florida high school students in U.S. government classes must receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” before they can graduate.

Legal analysts blasted special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden on Friday, deriding the Department of Justice investigation as a “partisan hit job.”

“Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions,” former Attorney General Eric Holder said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.”

Andew Weissman, former lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, called the report “entirely inappropriate.”

“It is also exactly what you’re not supposed to do, which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions,” said Weissman. “You either decide to go forward, that there is proof here, or you don’t say anything at all with respect to your opinions about the case.”

A top Biden campaign official described Hur’s report as a “Comey moment,” while former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer dubbed the report a “partisan hit job.”

And Vice President Kamala Harris offered her own aggressive defense of the president Friday, calling for the special counsel to have a “higher level of integrity” after the report accused the 81-year-old president of having a memory with “significant limitations.”

“What I saw in that report last night, I believe, is—as a former prosecutor—the comments that were made by that prosecutor [are] gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate,” Harris told reporters on Friday.

“October 7, Israel experienced a horrific attack, and I will tell you we got the calls, the president and myself, in the hours after that occurred,” Harris continued. “It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America, and I was in almost every meeting with the president in the hours and days that followed.”

“The president was in front of and on top of it all,” she added.

“So, the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized, could not be more wrong on the facts, and [is] clearly politically motivated.”

The report, which claimed Biden struggled to remember basic details like what year his vice presidency under Obama ended and what year his son Beau died, during an interview just days after October 7, challenged the president on an already crumbling front. Polling indicates that three-quarters of Americans think that Biden is too old for a second term.

Special Counsel Jack Smith on Thursday night warned that the judge in Donald Trump’s classified documents case has made a “clear error” that could put witnesses at risk.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled that some unredacted discovery documents should be made available to Trump’s legal team. Those documents could expose sensitive information, including the names of potential witnesses.

It’s hardly surprising that Smith has spoken out about the ways in which Cannon’s decision could end very badly. In a court filing on Thursday, the special counsel urged the judge to reconsider.

“That discovery material, if publicly docketed in unredacted form as the Court has ordered, would disclose the identities of numerous potential witnesses, along with the substance of the statements they made to the FBI or the grand jury, exposing them to significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment, as has already happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved,” he wrote.

Smith also reminded Cannon of an Eleventh Circuit decision that goes against her recent decision.

“The Eleventh Circuit has held that the compelling-interest standard applied by the Court does not apply to ‘documents filed in connection with motions to compel discovery,’ which instead may be sealed or redacted simply upon a showing of ‘good cause,’” he wrote.

The Eleventh Circuit, coincidentally, is the same court that once struck down Cannon’s decision to grant Trump’s request to appoint a special master in the classified documents case.

It won’t be hard for Smith to demonstrate the “good cause” for not releasing those documents. Throughout his legal trials, Trump has made a habit out of harassing courtroom staff, plaintiffs, and witnesses.

The threats that Trump can bring to bear against his perceived enemies are so well documented that legal experts have raised the alarm about the safety of witnesses and jurors in his future trials—and jurists have acted on their advice. In the E. Jean Carroll trial that wrapped up last month, the jury was partially sequestered and fully anonymous. Jurors were warned not to share their names even with each other, using numbers instead. Judge Lewis Kaplan took those steps precisely because he was worried about Trump’s behavior.

Moments after the jury delivered its massive $83.3 million verdict against Trump, Kaplan gave them an ominous warning: “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury.”

Trump is facing 40 counts for keeping classified documents long after he left the White House. His aide, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago employee, Carlos De Oliveira, are also facing charges.