Kennedy posts viral video of himself wrangling snakes in Florida
Kennedy posted a video of himself barehanded with two snakes at Dr. Oz’s Florida home, while Cheryl Hines urged him to let them go.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned a Florida patio into a viral tableau on Tuesday, posting a video to X that showed the health and human services secretary wrangling two snakes with his bare hands at Dr. Mehmet Oz’s beachfront home in West Palm Beach. The clip spread quickly across social media, with Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, heard in the background urging him to let the snakes go.
Multiple outlets identified the snakes as black racer snakes, and reports said the pair appeared to be mating. The footage gave Kennedy another highly visible moment built around the outdoorsman image he has used throughout his public life, this time with one of the administration’s most recognizable health officials as the backdrop.
The setting tied the spectacle directly to the federal health bureaucracy. Oz serves as the 17th administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services under HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump, putting him at the center of the same health apparatus that Kennedy oversees from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy was sworn in as the 26th HHS secretary in the Oval Office in February 2025.
The snake video also fit neatly into Kennedy’s broader public branding, which HHS describes as centered on the MAHA initiative, shorthand for “Make America Healthy Again.” Under that banner, Kennedy has pushed a political identity that blends health policy, nature, and personal ruggedness, making even a backyard encounter part of a larger narrative around the department’s direction.
The online reaction was mostly amusement and disbelief, but the clip carried a sharper political edge as well. Kennedy leads a department responsible for Medicare, Medicaid, public health, and vaccine policy, so his personal-image moments now land alongside major decisions about the reach and priorities of federal health power.
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