The Brutal Truth About RFK Jr.'s Absence From Tatiana Schlossberg's Funeral

For the Kennedy family, there were plenty of devastating moments at Tatiana Schlossberg's funeral on January 5. It's safe to say, however, that they weren't devastated that one family member was absent. 35-year-old environmental journalist and daughter of Caroline Kennedy, Tatiana, died on December 30, and the crowd at her funeral included many familiar faces. Yet, her cousin, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly not on the invite list.

Tatiana's mother, husband, and two children were in attendance at her funeral, as was her cousin Maria Shriver and brother Jack Schlossberg, among many others. Despite how many mourners showed up, the funeral was a private one. Whether RFK Jr. wasn't invited to the funeral or simply didn't show hasn't been made explicitly clear. Yet, there is no question about why he wouldn't be welcome to pay his respects to Tatiana — or really to appear at any Kennedy family gathering. Just a month before she died of leukemia, Tatiana opened up about her diagnosis in an essay for The New Yorker. In it, she addressed the elephant in the room of the Kennedy family: RFK Jr. "Throughout my treatment, he had been on the national stage: previously a Democrat, he was running for President as an Independent, but mostly as an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family," she wrote. And she went even further, noting that thanks to him, "Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky."

In her essay, Tatiana Schlossberg recalled the chaos and panic that she watched ripple through the world of medical research, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Doctors and scientists at Columbia ... didn't know if they would be able to continue their research, or even have jobs," she wrote. She went on to say, "Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn't be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly."

Evidently, Tatiana didn't mince words about her feelings about RFK Jr. And, many of her family members are no different. "Bobby is addicted to attention and power," Caroline Kennedy said in a January 2025 video posted on X (formerly Twitter), adding "Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own kids while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs." A month prior to Tatiana's death, her brother Jack Schlossberg, who is running for Congress, appeared on MSNBC and called RFK Jr. a "rabid dog," noting, "[Donald Trump] put a collar on my cousin RFK Jr., and has him there barking, spreading lies and spreading misinformation." Suffice it to say, it's easy to see why RFK Jr. was anything but welcome at a family gathering that was already so painful for the Kennedys.