US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has become known for saying and doing bizarre and outlandish things – from his claims around autism and Tylenol, to recently sharing an AI video of him wrestling a Twinkie.
And now, during a fireside chat held on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC, for short) in Dallas, Texas, RFK Jr told attendees that President Donald Trump is “exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be”, saying that he is “the opposite of a narcissist” and is in fact “an empath”.
He went on to add: “He has an encyclopaedic, molecular knowledge on this wide range of very very eclectic interests: music, Broadway shows, pro wrestling, football, every sport, golf … and business and Wall Street. He knows how everybody made their money and what deals they made, and he tells stories all the time about it.”
“One time, during the campaign, I was on the airplane with them, and we were sitting across the table from each other, eating McDonalds, drinking Diet Coke, and we started talking about Syria.
“He got a place mat, and he turned it on his back and he took a Sharpie and he drew a perfect map of the Middle East and then he put the troop strength of every country on every border on that map.
“It challenged a lot of the assumptions that I had been told about him.”
Meanwhile, X/Twitter users were challenging the authenticity of RFK Jr’s anecdote:
Journalist Medhi Hasan tweeted: “If you believe this story you may be the dumbest, most gullible person you yourself have ever come across”:
Writer and essayist Sami Gold referenced North Korea propaganda and said: “We’re already reaching the ‘Kim Jong-il was born on the top of a mountain’ stage of Trumpism”:
Commentator Evan Loves Worf wrote: “Nothing in history happened less than this did”:
While one user commented: “I dare a reporter to ask him to do this live”:
RFK Jr’s remarks were made on the last day of the 2026 CPAC – a conference which has also made headlines this week after Republican Matt Schlapp asked the crowd if they wanted to see impeachment hearings for Trump, only to be met with applause.
“No, that was the wrong answer,” he said.
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