Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr posted a video this week showing himself wrestling two black racer snakes at the Florida home of fellow Trump appointee Mehmet Oz, capturing the moment one of the serpents bit his hand.
In the 49-second clip, Kennedy is seen grabbing both snakes with his bare hands while his wife Cheryl Hines urges caution. As he displays them to the camera, one rears up and strikes his left hand. A voice believed to belong to Oz speculates the snakes were mating before questioning whether they were fighting. Kennedy laughs throughout the encounter, which took place on what is believed to be Oz's Palm Beach waterfront property.
Black racers are the most common snake species in Florida, known for their speed and agility but entirely harmless to humans. The post identified them as being removed from Oz's patio.
The incident marks the latest entry in a peculiar catalog of animal encounters that have become public knowledge about Kennedy in recent weeks. Last month, his newly published biography revealed that in 2001, Kennedy cut the penis from a dead raccoon on a New York highway while standing in front of his parked car. "I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be," he wrote in his journal, according to the book's author Isabel Vincent.
In 2014, Kennedy admitted to finding a dead bear cub during a road trip, putting it in his van with plans to skin and eat it later. When time constraints forced him to cancel those plans before a flight, he said he dumped the animal in Central Park and placed a bicycle on top of it, hoping to frame a cyclist.
Kennedy's fascination with dead animals appears to extend further. The biography also references his alleged interest in collecting skulls of deceased seagulls, and claims he once severed the head of a washed-up whale with a chainsaw, then drove home with it strapped to his car roof.
The health secretary has not publicly addressed these accounts or the latest snake incident. The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment when asked about the video.
Author James Rodriguez: "If this is what Kennedy does on a Tuesday afternoon in Florida, the public deserves to know exactly what his full medical history looks like and whether any of his past animal-related injuries should concern the people he now oversees in healthcare."
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