Robert F. Kennedy Jr. handles snakes at Florida home, video goes viral

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned a quiet Palm Beach patio into a viral wildlife spectacle, posting a video on May 26 that showed him handling two nonvenomous black racer snakes at Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Florida home. In the clip, Cheryl Hines, Kennedy’s wife, could be heard objecting and asking why he was doing it, while Kennedy said in the caption that he was removing the snakes from Oz’s property.

The snakes were identified in coverage as black racers, a species herpetologists described as largely harmless to humans. That did not make the scene risk-free. Bonnie Keller, a herpetologist, said handling snakes by the tail is not how she would do it and can injure the animals’ spines. Sean McKnight of the Rattlesnake Conservancy said people should minimize the time they handle wildlife because it stresses the animals. The message from wildlife experts was clear: even when a snake is not venomous, grabbing it for a video can still do damage.

Kennedy’s latest animal encounter fits a pattern that has followed him across campaigns and public life. Earlier this month, he posted about rescuing a bird at Dulles Airport. In 2024, while running for president, he shared a video of himself capturing a rattlesnake in California with a net. He also later acknowledged that he put a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park as a prank in 2014. Each episode has burnished his image as a back-to-the-land provocateur, but it has also raised questions about judgment, performance and the line between personal branding and public responsibility.

That tension matters because Kennedy is not just a viral figure. He is the 26th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, serving under the Trump administration, and HHS says he is leading the administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. The department also says Kennedy co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance and served as its president for 21 years, helping grow it into the world’s largest nonprofit devoted to clean water, with more than 1 million volunteers and branches in 40 countries. In that light, the snake video reads less like harmless entertainment than a window into how a health official packages authority through spectacle.

Florida has long dealt with snake issues of its own, from native wildlife encounters to invasive species that threaten ecosystems. Public officials in the state have framed snake removal as part of wildlife and ecosystem health, and the Everglades still bears the cost of invasive Burmese pythons, with more than 17,000 removed since 2000. Against that backdrop, Kennedy’s patio performance was more internet theater than public service, a reminder that in health policy as in wildlife management, expertise still matters more than the clip.