HEALTHJesse Watters Asks RFK Jr. If He'll 'Leave Raccoons Alone' After He Allegedly Took Roadkill Home to 'Study' Years Ago
Jesse Watters asked embattled HHS Secretary RFK Jr. if he'll 'leave the raccoons alone' following a story that the politician liked to study roadkill.
June 30 2026, Published 12:37 p.m. ET
Jesse Watters confronted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Fox News regarding a highly publicized biography excerpt that claimed Kennedy once severed the g-------- of a road-killed raccoon.
During the segment on Jesse Watters Primetime, in which the embattled HHS Secretary was touting the resurrection of the Presidential Fitness Test and President Donald Trump's executive order to scale regenerative farming, Watters brought up the bizarre anecdote and explicitly asked Kennedy if he would "leave the raccoons alone" moving forward.
RFK JR. said he would leave racoons alone 'for the moment.'
“Very good, and you’re going to leave the raccoons alone?” he asked.
Kennedy nonchalantly responded, “Yeah, for the moment.”
In April, a TMZ reporter asked Kennedy, “What did you do with the raccoon’s dead p----? Where is it now?”
Kennedy didn’t reply and just laughed.
The politician didn't reply when asked where the dead raccoon body party currently was.
The Fox interview followed widespread media attention over the story, adding to a list of viral, animal-related controversies surrounding Kennedy.
The incident originally came to light in the biography RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise by author Isabel Vincent.
- RFK Jr. 'Cut Off a Road Killed' Raccoon's Private Parts While His Kids Waited in the Car and Brought It Home to 'Study,' Book Claims
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- John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Reckless Lifestyle May Have Made Him 'Vulnerable' to a Kidnapping Plot
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RKF Jr. Wanted to 'Study' the Dead Raccoon
In an alleged 2001 diary entry, RFK Jr. said he picked up the roadkill while on a drive with his children.
The book unearthed a November 2001 diary entry written by Kennedy in which he admitted to stopping his car on Interstate 684 in New York to cut the p---- off a dead raccoon so he could "study it later.”
His diary noted that his children "waited patiently in the car" while he performed the makeshift extraction.
While the story drew immense mockery on late-night television and cable news, wildlife biologists noted that studying a raccoon's p---- bone (known as a baculum) is a legitimate method used in wildlife ecology to determine a population's age structure.
Inside RFK Jr.'s Odd History With Dead Animals
In 2014, Robert F. Kennedy dumped a dead bear cub in NYC's Central Park.
However, critics and bioethicists pointed out the stark difference between structured scientific research and Kennedy's impromptu, roadside acquisitions.
The raccoon story is one of several unusual encounters with dead animals that have defined Kennedy's public profile.
Kennedy admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Manhattan's Central Park in 2014, staging it to look like a bicycle accident.
In addition, his daughter Kick Kennedy revealed in a 2012 interview that her father used a chainsaw to sever the head of a dead, beached whale and strapped it to the roof of the family minivan for a five-hour drive.
In May, RFK posted a viral video of himself wrangling two non-venomous black racer snakes with his bare hands. The incident occurred on the patio of Dr. Mehmet Oz in Florida, with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, heard off-camera pleading for him to let them go.
