Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is showing a softer side of himself as the 2024 presidential election draws closer. As seen in the video below, with a collection of personal family photos, animal lover Kennedy says he’s been hawking since the age of 9.
I started doing hawking when I was 9 years old and there's not been any time in my life since then that I haven't had birds and haven't been involved in the sport. It's one of the great joys of my life. pic.twitter.com/y7h2WGS0tE
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 26, 2023
And in the interview below with former Saturday Night Live comedian Jim Breuer (Half Baked), Kennedy reveals the story of how he acquired a lion as a pet when he was child in the 1960s.
Kennedy says when Hollywood finished filming the 1966 movie Born Free, featuring a real life lion (Elsa) and a den of cubs, TV talk show host (and animal lover) Jack Paar found out that “they were going to kill them all,” and adopted the lions.
[Whether Kennedy remembers every detail of this Camelot boyhood event accurately, there is a documentary film called Jack Paar and His Lions — and it has been reported that Paar, while living in the Westchester suburb of Bronxville, “for several months in the late 1960s owned a lion cub named Amani” that was often “seen in the village” and accompanied Paar’s wife (on a leash) to the local hair salon, “where he quietly sat next to her as she was having her hair done.”]
Paar had become a Kennedy family friend after he had interviewed Kennedy’s father, the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and one night at the Kennedy’s home, Paar offered one of the lions to the family and RFK, Jr. spoke up and accepted.
Kennedy explains that after the lion mauled a deer, “they took it away from me.”
Growing up, I had a number of pets, including a lion. #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/3aeGGDOi2t
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 27, 2023
Breuer follows up the story with a fun idea. He tells Kennedy if he does win the presidency, he thinks he should get another lion. “How amazing would it be to come out with a press conference with a lion?! That’s making a statement, Robert.”
