April 16, 2026 • 36 mins
Many criticized Gov. Pillen's response to what government can do about criminal mental health reform, but is he wrong? Also, we talk to the author of the new book "RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you very much for being here with us, saw
on news radio eleven ten kfa B. We love being
here with you. It be where we come to laugh,
cry and get through the day together. I'm Scott Vorhees,
Lucy Chapman. Can I talk to you now?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You can talk to me anytime.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm still stung from three hours ago. I tried to
talk to you and you're like, I'm busy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Are you? Yeah, it's still sticking with you.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
That hurt. That's gonna bother me for I'm over it and.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You're gonna be all right, Yeah, I'll be okay. What
do you want to talk about?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, I don't want to talk about any of this.
But it's kind of like if you if your job
is to make donuts, you can't show up at work
and be like, I don't feel like making donuts, all right,
what would you like to do? I don't know, hang out?
Well you can't, Well, you can't do that. You've got
to make the donuts. Well, so donuts, we got to
(00:53):
make the donut. Donuts do sound good?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
They really do.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Today the donuts look like everything that's still radiating from
the incident at Walmart approximately forty eight hours ago, just
in case you just got back to town going wait, now,
what happened? Really? The story starts years ago. But Tuesday morning,
(01:19):
quarter after nine, a caregiver, a friend of the father,
and this kid, three year old boy, sitting in the
shopping cart going through Walmart. And that's when some lady
decided to grab a big chef's knife and approached the
caregiver and this is the woman and this three year
(01:41):
old kid, and marched them out of the store brandishing
the knife. She cuts the kid twice. He's got a
big scar that he'll have the rest of his life
on his head and on his hand. Not to mention
whatever emotional scars that he has based on what happened
(02:04):
on Tuesday, because I don't know what he's going to
remember from all of this. At three, you have memories,
you have pictures, glimpses. Some people have better memories of
what happened to him when they were three than others.
But I don't know how you forget a woman getting
shot by police while holding a knife that she just
(02:24):
cut you with twice in front of you and screaming
people around you. But that's what happened. The story about
that woman who got shot and killed. Goes back several years,
but in the news it goes back two years ago.
This is the woman who in South Omaha stabbed her dad,
(02:47):
doused him in lighter fluid, and tried to set her
father on fire when her father suggested maybe that was
not a good activity. She's twenty nine at the time.
She leaves the house, goes down to Saint Francis, barricades
herself in the rectory after also trying to stab the
priest there. K E TV News Watch seven talked to
(03:09):
Father Zerline Damian Zerline, a priest at Saint Francis Cabrini,
and they said, do you remember when the woman He's like, yeah,
it rings a bell. Two years ago she breaks into
the rectory. It's it's super early in the morning and
she breaks in and and father Zerline says, I said
(03:32):
who are you? And she goes, well, who are you?
He said, I live here, And she said, quote, well,
I'm going to do terrible things here unquote use whatever
she could find in the rectory this is the living
quarters for the priest, barricades herself inside and uh and
(03:56):
father Zurlin. Zerlin says, I remembered her strength he tells
k E TV. I actually didn't think she could get
into the room I was in because there was it
was dead bolt locked, but she shattered the doorframe and
bent the dead bolt. So she has a knife. She's
trying to set fire to all of this. A couple
(04:20):
of days after this happened, in early March twenty twenty four,
this woman's mom comes to the church. And now two
years later and this is this was all talked about
with the police. The father recalls that the mother was
frightened of her and worried that if she didn't get care,
(04:41):
she would continue to cause harm, cause harm to herself
or to others. And obviously the family was calling for
not just mental health reform for anyone and everyone going forward,
but specifically what are we going to do with this woman?
And the answer apparently was nothing. What resources are available?
(05:08):
People say there aren't any. We don't have. Call it
what you will, a mental health facility and asylum. You know,
asylum has a really bad connotation to it. Well, you
know who really didn't care it was the people in
the asylum. By wait a second, Oh, these are good
(05:29):
people like Jack Nicholson and like, yeah, I know one
Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, as we've talked about yesterday,
and Jim Rose detailed a bit in his Rosie de
Genozi fifteen minutes ago. After that movie, people thought, oh,
this is how it is in an insane asylum. It's
people who shouldn't be there, and some people who are
(05:50):
there against their will, and they've got experiments being done
on them, and nurse ratchets really mean, and all the
rest of this stuff. And so we got to shut
these things down, and overtime, over the decades it followed,
including as recently as a few years ago in Glenwood, Iowa,
they shut them all down. Well that didn't stop. You know,
it turns out if you close all the insane asylums,
(06:13):
you still have people who need to be in an
insane asylum. So what happens to them? Some of them
end up in a lot of them end up in jail.
Many of them end up in homeless encampments, in and
out of shelters, in and out of family friends who
continue to kick them out of the house because they're like, look,
(06:33):
I can't have this in my house. I mean, in
some instances, you have mental health treatment facilities. But you
can only keep someone there so long. If they want
to leave, you got to let them leave, even if
the family says, don't let them leave. There's no money,
there's no resources, there's no beds, there's no room. But
(06:54):
we keep taking all this money and we put in it.
We put it towards homeless resources, jails, and and all
the rest of this. So two years ago, this woman
ends up before a judge. You've got the family and
the priest saying, we think this person needs real, serious help,
and because of what is allowed in the law, the
(07:17):
judge may have had no other option but to succumb
to this is not guilty by reason of insanity. We've
got a let her go because that's exactly what happened.
I don't know if it was the judge's fault. I
got some people saying, absolutely, the judge could have done more, didn't,
(07:38):
And I got some people saying, actually, there's not really
much in Nebraska you can do. Well, this story doesn't
have to end there. People were reaching out to Governor
Pillen yesterday saying what could Nebraska do on mental health?
And I don't know that anyone liked his answer either,
because they thought it was callous, they thought it was glib,
(08:00):
they thought it was pollyannic, or they thought it was
a lie or too simplistic, or it was the truth
and they didn't want to hear it. Here's what the
governor said when asked what can we do in Nebraska
to assist people who are in a mental health crisis
and might be a danger to themselves and others? What
(08:23):
can we do? And the governor talked about well, social
media on phones. I don't know if you mentioned alcohol
and narcotics the availability thereof as contributing factors. But when asked,
like what can we do, he said, quote, we can
help our brothers and sisters if we can get a
little juice in our step, have a little joy in
(08:45):
our heart, walk down the hall. You don't even have
to say a word, just smile, because you know we're
everybody's living too isolated, so that's every one of us
can do something. Unquote. I read the quote as a said,
right there, people are looking at this, going to wait
a second. You have someone who's a dangerous schizophrenic who
(09:09):
likes to stab and set fire to people, and you're
walking down the hall, or let's say you're just walking
by in the aisle at Walmart, just smile and this
person suddenly is like, you know what, I was gonna
get all stabby today, but that stranger smiled at me.
Turns out that's all that was needed. I feel better. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Well, sometimes a smile at somebody who is absolutely insane
is all they need to do more.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, you, governor, Look, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
What is he saying?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
What he's saying is we just need to all be
better to each other. But yeah, that's true when you've
got people who how many of us are just living
in quiet desperation with occasional bouts of getting loud and
getting frustrated. I tick, I kicked a trash can here
at the radio station yesterday. I'd never kicked that trash
(10:03):
can before. It turns out as heavier, and I thought.
My toe still hurts, and I'm glad. I wish I'd
broken my toe. I don't need to behave like that.
Why was I mad? Oh? Because this computer I've been
complaining about for years was supposed to do something that
usually takes about twenty five seconds, and it was taking
and I'm not exaggerating twenty five minutes and I had
(10:24):
to go. I didn't have time, So I thought that
trash can needs to be kicked. I'm a grown man.
I don't need to be kicking a trash But.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You're talking about people, yeah, who are so rational.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right right now? I know. And what the Governor's saying
is if we're all just a little bit better to
each other once in a while, it can help with
these things. But that's not the question. The question is
when you have people who are criminally dangerous and insane,
that little extra drop of retsin that says, oh, you're
you're dangerous and your nuts. What are we supposed to
(11:00):
do with you? The answer can't be, Jim, why don't
you smile? That's not gonna help. But then the governor said,
and this is the part where you can you can
disagree with his assessment there of what are you talking
about all you want? But he said, look, I don't
(11:20):
think there's anything government can do to improve mental health.
If we're talking about improving it, I don't think the
Nebraska unicameral or a smile from a stranger is suddenly
going to improve mental health. If you have someone who
(11:44):
is criminally insanely dangerous, but the answer can't be when
you have someone who two years ago does all the
things we just detail where she did in the home
and then at the church, the answer can't be, well,
we can't keep her anywhere. So I guess we just
(12:06):
not guilty by reason of insanity and you're free to go.
But hey, and I'm serious, you got to check in
with a mental health counselor wants every blue moon or whatever,
which is what she was supposed to do. Her next
check in was coming up here in two months. She's
not gonna make it. She did. She was shot and
(12:26):
killed in the Walmart parking lot at seventy second and
Pine Tuesday morning. And sadly, for the next round of
people who are criminally insanely dangerous, that is probably how
they're going to meet their end as well. When you
have someone who is that level of dangerous, does anyone,
(12:49):
I mean, does anyone really think the best thing for them,
for them, or anyone, including this three year old kid, Kyler,
does anyone really think the best thing for them is
to be out just walking around? What has she been?
I keep asking this question. I don't know that we'll
ever really get the answer. Where's she been for the
(13:12):
last two years. Two years ago, she's trying to light
up her dad and the church. And then on Tuesday
she tried to stab a kid. She gets shot and killed.
Where's she been for two years?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I don't know, but it sounds like she lost her
best chance for some kind of help with the with
the priest. I think that would have been her, probably
with that kind of strength that you mentioned. Yep, that's
drugs or.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Or whatever. Yeah. Whatever. The family of this kid now
we're in the throes of their own struggle. Mom talked
to the news yesterday. First Alert six News with the
story here said the mom said, yeah, I went on
and why someone really needed to box her out on Tuesday.
(13:56):
She went on social media Tuesday night. This is after
she gets to call at work in Lincoln on Tuesday morning.
Your kids at the hospital, Wait what and then someone's
trying to explain what happened. She's trying to rationalize all
this stuff and also drive to Omaha as fast as
she can. And then that night, after the kid goes
(14:17):
into surgery, comes out, turns out he's gonna be okay
as well as can be expected, she goes on social media.
She says I finally had to stop scrolling. I saw
so many comments from people said the officers shouldn't have
shot the woman who had a knife against her son
and cut him twice and was gonna do it again.
(14:38):
And people are like, I don't know why the cops
had to shoot her. They could have just tased her.
They could have probably talked her down. She didn't really
want to hurt this kid. She already hurt him twice.
No tell him what she was gonna do. You see
that look on her face and people look and see
the cop as anything other than a hero. And the
mom was seeing these comments, What is the matter with you?
(14:59):
P You decide to go on there and criticize the
people who saved this kid's life when the mom is
looking at social media. She shouldn't have been looking at
social media. But I don't blame her. Her head's spinning
out of control all day. What do you think is
gonna happen? This kid's got five siblings also dealing with
(15:21):
what happened to their brother. The brother didn't even cry
about any of it until finally he had to go
to surgery and had to leave his dad's side. That's
the first time he cried, he's a tough guy. We'll
see if we talked about this yesterday, what the rest
of his life is, because he's going to be asked
(15:41):
what happened with the side of your head there from
well intentioned people who don't know better than to ask
those questions. Never ask someone, hey, what happened to your face?
Just don't ask that question. How'd you get that scar?
I mean, it's fine you know someone for a while, friends,
you're I disagree in a relationship coworker. Well, even in
(16:05):
that instance, let's say you're dating someone for three years
and you just dieing and know how they get the scar?
You don't even ask him if they don't volunteer the information,
don't ask. No.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I disagree with everything with not asking because as little
kids there, he's three, Yeah, when he goes gets into school,
little kids are gonna ask.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Little kids are gonna ask, and you know.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
What, that's going to give him the tools he needs
to get through life with this scar. Yeah, because if
nobody asks asks him his whole life, which that wouldn't
happen anyway, But if nobody asks him his whole life,
then he's just going to walk around like but I
don't know why nobody notices this or you know, nobody
(16:49):
wants nobody wants to pay attention to me. Am I
that invisible?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You go that route, but you you build up your
ability to deal with pull in kindergarten, in first grade,
in grade school, and so many kids today are not
getting that. So I hope that they do ask about it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. I used to have a little and they will
their kids, their kids if if I walked in I
got a scar on my face and if a kid
noticed it, they're going to ask, what happened to your face?
What happened to your face? Kid? You know you can't
say that though you're supposed to be the adult.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
But I had a little, well big freckle on my
eyebrow growing up.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
It's gone growing up in grade school, junior high, and
people would ask me and tease me about it because
it looked like a little map actually looked like a
little map of Australia. A freckle looked like, Yeah, it
was pretty good. I mean obviously you could see it
was pretty good size, and it faded over the years
and it's gone now and that's great.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, that was probably a birthmark.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
No, it was a freckle, because birthmarks don't go away,
I guess. I mean you could call it a birth
smarts go away.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
My freckles seemed to well, it's going to multiply. It
moved out in the sun. We're getting into freckles season
on my stupid face.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, the point is maybe it just lightened so much
or faded so much, I barely even notice it. But
the point is kids would always tease me about it
growing up, and I am glad about that. I wasn't
at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
No, of course not. And if it wasn't that, it'd
be something else, right, kids, And these are some of
your best friends.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Who teach me.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I know. That's how it goes.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Thro the cur I know, well, thanks for the help, but.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
By I don't know. Some of we all got teased
mercilessly growing up in the seventies, eighties, even throughout the
early nineties. And then it changed where you're like, you
can't do anything. But some of us got tough, some
of us got therapy, some combination of the two. I
don't know, but we should do a topic someday on
(18:57):
how'd you get that scar? And you'd tell a story
about how you got your scar. That'd be a good
topic for kfab nations someday. But my story is so boring.
Moe's surgery. Who's Moe. He's the guy that runs most tavern.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, but that's as an adult, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, it was just a few years ago. Yeah, I know,
and it'll be one of many. I got a whole lifetime. Yeah.
When my dermatologist says I bought a yacht, it's the
S S Voorhees, I'm like, yeah, she knows this is
I'm putting her kids through college. Scotties News Radio eleven KFAB.
(19:39):
I'm looking at the social media account of the mom
of three year old Kyler, and I don't know if
she knows how public all this stuff is. I'll let
some of her story be her story. I will relate
that she did post yesterday when the Omaha Police Department
identified the officers involved stopping the threat that had already
(20:03):
cut her son twice, and who knows what she was
gonna do next they stopped that threat, she posted these
two men who risk their lives every day and have
for more than two decades, saved my son's life. They
are true heroes. Yeah, she was trying to deal with
(20:25):
all of that. Just very very scary stuff. You know,
when people look at what are we going to do
with mental health? I mean, the answer can't be I
don't know nothing, just hope that for the I mean,
there are so many families who see this in kids
who then become teenagers and then and then the families
(20:49):
realize there is nothing we can do. And we and
a lot of people think until you go through something
like that, you think that you just go to I
don't know, the police, he's a judge, one of the
mental health organizations around town, and say my kid is dangerous,
tried to smoke the cat, and we're we have concerns,
(21:14):
and then they say we'll take it from here. Thanks
so much. But that's not what happens. That's not what
can happen. That's not what we as a society have
decided we want to allow to happen. And I know
the issue is like, well, what do you do? Well,
no one wants to really hear that, and the answer
(21:36):
is the same as what used to happen. You have
someone committed. But if we do that, then there I know,
it's it's it's not it's not a comfortable conversation to have.
And basically, when you are part of the process of
trying to get someone committed there, it's probably a lot
(22:01):
involved there that we can come up with scenarios that
would make us nervous when your rights are taken away,
whether that is your right to freedom, whether that's your
right to a firearm. And someone says, yeah, I think
that guy is crazy dangerous. How do you know that
he cut me off in traffic and voted for Trump?
(22:22):
And then you get some judge that says voted for Trump.
Oh my gosh, that person shouldn't be a lot And
then they lock you up and you get a lobotomy
and you got a permanent grin on your face.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Wouldn't one answer possibly be that when a judge decides
that you're criminally insane, that because we talked about the jailing,
the prison system not able to handle that kind of stuff.
And then I'm sure that they actually do. I'm sure
they're in there, but couldn't we just have an extra
(22:55):
wing or something like that, rather than building new asylums,
have places for at least the criminally insane.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
But that's fine, I mean, I get when you start
talking about you need to have an asylum where people
can be committed, and people say, but they're gonna take
anyone who eats meat and voted for Trump and they're
gonna lock them up, They're gonna have them committed. Okay,
Well that's not criminally insane, no, I know. So somewhere
(23:24):
between that and trying to kill everybody with knives and fire,
which is what this woman was doing, somewhere closer to
that ladder end of the spectrum is probably an okay
place where we say, all right, due to this person's actions,
you have been committed to Shady Acre's looney bin, and
(23:48):
your family can visit you tuesdays after three o'clock. I mean,
is anyone really all that? But we don't do that.
I mean, there's even a story in the news today
that says scientists now say that lobsters definitely feel pain
when boiled alive, and we need to stop doing that.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
We won't really know why that was ever a question.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We won't even boil crustaceans, right, what do you think
we're gonna do to the person who commits all these
these crimes? And like, well, we think we should take
her rights away. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, lobsters
sometimes have more rights than people taking their toddlers to
a grocery store. People are looking out more for lobsters
(24:37):
than kids in our community. Yeah, I'm thinking about taking
my kid to a place where there could be someone
dangerously out there trying to get trying to stab him.
Can you guys do something about that? No, no, no,
we're trying to save the lobsters right now, your kid.
I don't know. That's there's a that's that's a slippery
(24:58):
slope to go down. But the love, if we stop going,
what are we going to do to lobsters? Now? We
have to do like a special lethal injection, and we
can't get the drugs to deal with that, and it's
going to cost a lot of money, and next thing
you know, lobsters are going to be expensive.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Wait a minute, what.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Scott Boys News Radio eleven ten kfab That's what I'd
say too when they came to me and said, I
need the special serum to be able to sedate the
lobster so it doesn't feel any pain. How much is that,
I say, Oh? For the lobsters market price That's what
I'd say. Nice, thank you. Here's a name that has
come up quite a bit on the radio over the
(25:40):
last couple of years, and certainly a last name that
has been a part of the fabric of our lives
for the last few generations, and OURFK. Junior is the
subject of a new book called Our FK Junior, The
Fall and Rise. The author Isabelle Vincent. Joins us now
on news Radio eleven ten. AFA B, Good morning, thanks
(26:01):
so much for being a part of the show.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Good morning, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
What made you decide RFK Junior would be an enthralling
subject for a book?
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Well, so I started looking at him thirteen years ago
when after the death of his the suicide of his
second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, and at that time a
source of mine who knew her well, had shown me
some of his diaries. And the diaries were fascinating. I mean,
(26:32):
I worked for the New York Posts. We wrote a
few stories at that time, but there was so much
more about this man and the complexity of this man
that came out in these diaries. One thing his whole
life has been predicated on, you know, the assassination of
his father when he was when he was fourteen years old.
I mean that sent him into a downward spiral of
(26:55):
you know, drug use, that got him kicked out of
two boarding schools. It really, it really affected him. And
what also affected him was the fact that, you know,
he was his father's namesake, so the third of eleven
kids of Robert Kennedy and ethel Skaykole, who was the
one who was supposed to go in his father's footsteps.
(27:16):
And I think that amount of pressure on him really
screwed him up for a long time, because the diaries
are full of him beating up on himself, you know,
not being able to fulfill that destiny. At one point,
he talks about his daddy, says, I know daddy, and
he calls him daddy, which I found very you know,
very moving. Daddy was looking down from at him from
(27:39):
heaven and that he still loved him, but he knew
he was failing him, and so his I wasn't so
when he when he did run for president, I wasn't
surprised because this is something that you know, he's been
told his whole life, and it's something that he's wanted
to do.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
His whole life there, any son is trying to measure
up to his father. I mean, I I'm trying to
play golf as well as my dad, and he's into
his eighties now, and he still beats me all the time. There,
Trying to measure up to your father can be a
difficult thing. When your dad is Bobby Kennedy and someone
who was assassinated like your uncle was when you were
(28:20):
a little kid, I can't even imagine. So now he's
in a Puerto Rican prison writing these things down, having
to sit alone there and come to grips with where
his life is. That wasn't you know, terribly long ago.
How old was he when when he was going through this.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I think he was in his forties. He was in
his forties at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, he wasn't some misguided teenager.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
No, he was in his forties and he'd gone through
the gamut of you know, addiction to women, addiction to
addiction to drugs. He was, you know, he finally found
a purpose in his life, which was the environmental movement.
But you know, after the prison, after his time in prison,
you know, as he's traveling the country and he's giving
(29:05):
all these speeches about the environment. He says, he writes
down that, you know, people come up to him and
say that they've that his speeches have really inspired them.
And he says of himself, I don't want to just
become this gentleman environmentalist. I want to make change. I
want to I want to do something that has meaning.
(29:25):
And so you know he's thinking at that time that
he wants to go he wants to do something in
national office. And you know, it takes him a while.
It's twenty three years later he's running for president. But
it was for me, it was revelatory, like just just
(29:46):
reading this and looking at him with his faults and
also but just this this constant striving to And you know,
I spoke to friends of his who actually had never
s the press before, and they said that he really
believes that he's doing good in the world.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The book, yeah, I'll jump in here. The book is
called RFK Junior, The Fall and Rise. We're talking with
the author of this book Isabelle's Evincent. Now, as you said,
you're a journalist with the New York Post, so it
doesn't sound to me based on what you've been saying
here this morning, Isabelle that you wrote this with any
kind of politics really in mind. This wasn't a glory
(30:29):
piece to look how great he is, nor was it
a hit piece. But when it comes to RFK Junior,
if you say anything about him, you're going to have
half the country suddenly say, how dare you, you know,
say anything good, bad, or even indifferent about him? Because
there are people who hate him. And these are just
members of his own family, right.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, so publicly a lot of his siblings have gone
against them. And you know, when he was running, they said, well,
we're going to support Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz. But
you know that's the point. I'm not a columnist. I'm
from Canada. I didn't know much about the Kennedy's when
I moved here. I've been here eighteen years and I
was just like, I've struck. And I think that is
(31:13):
helpful in my situation because I look at things as
I still look at things, as somewhat of a foreigner,
and I was struck by just how interesting all of
this was. And if you remove the political lens and
you just look at him as a person, he's a
very complex man, as we all are. But I don't
(31:35):
think that gets communicated at all.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I don't know if there's a more famous name in
American at least modern history than Kennedy. And you've got
every single I don't know that anyone and the Kennedy
family has ever stood up for him, and he bears
that name. Does it bother him that his family has
basically shunned him from the Kennedy empire?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
You know? I don't. I don't think that they've completely
done that. I think that he's still close to the siblings,
even the siblings who've who've who've completely gone against him publicly,
like his sister Carrie, who runs his younger sister, Carrie,
who runs the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation, and
(32:21):
she's come out and said, you know, denounced him in
various ways, but you know, they have a long history.
These are these are kids who are united also by
you know, a terrible tragedy. So yeah, publicly they're they're
going against him, but in private, I'm not so sure.
I mean, they may be, you know, they may be
(32:42):
mad at him, but are they you know, has there
been like a huge break. I'm not I'm not convinced
of that.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Does your book detail his time as Director of Health
and Human Services, especially asking questions about links between vaccines
and things like autism or what's going on with their food?
Very controversial. How did you deal with that in this book?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
So my my book takes him from you know, from
from his childhood to just after he was uh named
Health and Human Services Secretary. So I don't get too
much into that because of because of deadline pressure at
the time. I mean, I had to hand in the
(33:24):
book shortly after he was shortly after he entered the cabinet.
So so there's not much of that. There's there's you know,
the book does deal with the presidential campaign and and
but he's no, he's no stranger to controversy. I mean
his whole life he's been controversial. He's you know, when
(33:46):
he was in the environmental movement, people got mad at
him because he didn't listen. That was the you know,
that was what I the most. That was the thing
that kept coming back to, you know, with all the
people I interviewed, it's like he believes one way, it's
his way or the highway. He's not going to change.
So he ruffled. He evokes strong reactions from people, and
(34:10):
he always.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Has certainly and his time in the Trump administration. That
book is not written yet. Isabelle Vincent RFK Junior, The
Fall and Rise. Thank you very much for being on
the program today. Good talking to you, talking to you. Yeah,
I'll be anxious to see the follow up book on
RFK Junior in his time in the Trump administration because
I still don't know is Trump using him as an
(34:33):
asset or has is he still kind of using him
as a political tool, because he definitely was when it
was suddenly like, all right, we got to get RFK
Junior out of this race because he's going to take
away from me. But I got to get him on
my side, have him endorsed me, will give him a
cabinet position. We'll let him go out there and do
his thing. And I mean it looks like RFK Junior
(34:54):
has been able to do some of that. I think
Trump was correctly using him as aolitical tool in this time.
I'm not saying that as a real big negative there.
I mean, but now he's in your administration. I've always
credited RFK Junior with asking the right questions about everything
related to vaccines and medicines and the food. I mean,
(35:18):
ask the right questions. And now he has the opportunity
to get in there and do some of the stuff
to be able to enlighten us on some of these
things that he's been saying. Will he have the opportunity
to do so? Or the American people like, look, I
don't need that guy, you know, in the Trump administration
taking away maho hoes and trying to you know, save
(35:41):
my kids from whatever might be going on with the vaccines.
I mean, the science is clear on this one, is it?
Because every generation we learn new things about the science
that was cleared the past generation, and now they're like, hey,
maybe we should stop taking the lilamide. You know, so
four out of five doctors recommend to lilamite. You know,
So is he asking the right question? Is he going
(36:03):
to be able to do his thing? I guess that'll
be the next book. This book is called RFK Junior,
The Fall and Rise. Scott Bies News Radio eleven ten
kfab
Thank you very much for being here with us, saw
on news radio eleven ten kfa B. We love being
here with you. It be where we come to laugh,
cry and get through the day together. I'm Scott Vorhees,
Lucy Chapman. Can I talk to you now?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You can talk to me anytime.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm still stung from three hours ago. I tried to
talk to you and you're like, I'm busy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Are you? Yeah, it's still sticking with you.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
That hurt. That's gonna bother me for I'm over it and.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You're gonna be all right, Yeah, I'll be okay. What
do you want to talk about?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well, I don't want to talk about any of this.
But it's kind of like if you if your job
is to make donuts, you can't show up at work
and be like, I don't feel like making donuts, all right,
what would you like to do? I don't know, hang out?
Well you can't, Well, you can't do that. You've got
to make the donuts. Well, so donuts, we got to
(00:53):
make the donut. Donuts do sound good?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
They really do.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Today the donuts look like everything that's still radiating from
the incident at Walmart approximately forty eight hours ago, just
in case you just got back to town going wait, now,
what happened? Really? The story starts years ago. But Tuesday morning,
(01:19):
quarter after nine, a caregiver, a friend of the father,
and this kid, three year old boy, sitting in the
shopping cart going through Walmart. And that's when some lady
decided to grab a big chef's knife and approached the
caregiver and this is the woman and this three year
(01:41):
old kid, and marched them out of the store brandishing
the knife. She cuts the kid twice. He's got a
big scar that he'll have the rest of his life
on his head and on his hand. Not to mention
whatever emotional scars that he has based on what happened
(02:04):
on Tuesday, because I don't know what he's going to
remember from all of this. At three, you have memories,
you have pictures, glimpses. Some people have better memories of
what happened to him when they were three than others.
But I don't know how you forget a woman getting
shot by police while holding a knife that she just
(02:24):
cut you with twice in front of you and screaming
people around you. But that's what happened. The story about
that woman who got shot and killed. Goes back several years,
but in the news it goes back two years ago.
This is the woman who in South Omaha stabbed her dad,
(02:47):
doused him in lighter fluid, and tried to set her
father on fire when her father suggested maybe that was
not a good activity. She's twenty nine at the time.
She leaves the house, goes down to Saint Francis, barricades
herself in the rectory after also trying to stab the
priest there. K E TV News Watch seven talked to
(03:09):
Father Zerline Damian Zerline, a priest at Saint Francis Cabrini,
and they said, do you remember when the woman He's like, yeah,
it rings a bell. Two years ago she breaks into
the rectory. It's it's super early in the morning and
she breaks in and and father Zerline says, I said
(03:32):
who are you? And she goes, well, who are you?
He said, I live here, And she said, quote, well,
I'm going to do terrible things here unquote use whatever
she could find in the rectory this is the living
quarters for the priest, barricades herself inside and uh and
(03:56):
father Zurlin. Zerlin says, I remembered her strength he tells
k E TV. I actually didn't think she could get
into the room I was in because there was it
was dead bolt locked, but she shattered the doorframe and
bent the dead bolt. So she has a knife. She's
trying to set fire to all of this. A couple
(04:20):
of days after this happened, in early March twenty twenty four,
this woman's mom comes to the church. And now two
years later and this is this was all talked about
with the police. The father recalls that the mother was
frightened of her and worried that if she didn't get care,
(04:41):
she would continue to cause harm, cause harm to herself
or to others. And obviously the family was calling for
not just mental health reform for anyone and everyone going forward,
but specifically what are we going to do with this woman?
And the answer apparently was nothing. What resources are available?
(05:08):
People say there aren't any. We don't have. Call it
what you will, a mental health facility and asylum. You know,
asylum has a really bad connotation to it. Well, you
know who really didn't care it was the people in
the asylum. By wait a second, Oh, these are good
(05:29):
people like Jack Nicholson and like, yeah, I know one
Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, as we've talked about yesterday,
and Jim Rose detailed a bit in his Rosie de
Genozi fifteen minutes ago. After that movie, people thought, oh,
this is how it is in an insane asylum. It's
people who shouldn't be there, and some people who are
(05:50):
there against their will, and they've got experiments being done
on them, and nurse ratchets really mean, and all the
rest of this stuff. And so we got to shut
these things down, and overtime, over the decades it followed,
including as recently as a few years ago in Glenwood, Iowa,
they shut them all down. Well that didn't stop. You know,
it turns out if you close all the insane asylums,
(06:13):
you still have people who need to be in an
insane asylum. So what happens to them? Some of them
end up in a lot of them end up in jail.
Many of them end up in homeless encampments, in and
out of shelters, in and out of family friends who
continue to kick them out of the house because they're like, look,
(06:33):
I can't have this in my house. I mean, in
some instances, you have mental health treatment facilities. But you
can only keep someone there so long. If they want
to leave, you got to let them leave, even if
the family says, don't let them leave. There's no money,
there's no resources, there's no beds, there's no room. But
(06:54):
we keep taking all this money and we put in it.
We put it towards homeless resources, jails, and and all
the rest of this. So two years ago, this woman
ends up before a judge. You've got the family and
the priest saying, we think this person needs real, serious help,
and because of what is allowed in the law, the
(07:17):
judge may have had no other option but to succumb
to this is not guilty by reason of insanity. We've
got a let her go because that's exactly what happened.
I don't know if it was the judge's fault. I
got some people saying, absolutely, the judge could have done more, didn't,
(07:38):
And I got some people saying, actually, there's not really
much in Nebraska you can do. Well, this story doesn't
have to end there. People were reaching out to Governor
Pillen yesterday saying what could Nebraska do on mental health?
And I don't know that anyone liked his answer either,
because they thought it was callous, they thought it was glib,
(08:00):
they thought it was pollyannic, or they thought it was
a lie or too simplistic, or it was the truth
and they didn't want to hear it. Here's what the
governor said when asked what can we do in Nebraska
to assist people who are in a mental health crisis
and might be a danger to themselves and others? What
(08:23):
can we do? And the governor talked about well, social
media on phones. I don't know if you mentioned alcohol
and narcotics the availability thereof as contributing factors. But when asked,
like what can we do, he said, quote, we can
help our brothers and sisters if we can get a
little juice in our step, have a little joy in
(08:45):
our heart, walk down the hall. You don't even have
to say a word, just smile, because you know we're
everybody's living too isolated, so that's every one of us
can do something. Unquote. I read the quote as a said,
right there, people are looking at this, going to wait
a second. You have someone who's a dangerous schizophrenic who
(09:09):
likes to stab and set fire to people, and you're
walking down the hall, or let's say you're just walking
by in the aisle at Walmart, just smile and this
person suddenly is like, you know what, I was gonna
get all stabby today, but that stranger smiled at me.
Turns out that's all that was needed. I feel better. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Well, sometimes a smile at somebody who is absolutely insane
is all they need to do more.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, you, governor, Look, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
What is he saying?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
What he's saying is we just need to all be
better to each other. But yeah, that's true when you've
got people who how many of us are just living
in quiet desperation with occasional bouts of getting loud and
getting frustrated. I tick, I kicked a trash can here
at the radio station yesterday. I'd never kicked that trash
(10:03):
can before. It turns out as heavier, and I thought.
My toe still hurts, and I'm glad. I wish I'd
broken my toe. I don't need to behave like that.
Why was I mad? Oh? Because this computer I've been
complaining about for years was supposed to do something that
usually takes about twenty five seconds, and it was taking
and I'm not exaggerating twenty five minutes and I had
(10:24):
to go. I didn't have time, So I thought that
trash can needs to be kicked. I'm a grown man.
I don't need to be kicking a trash But.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You're talking about people, yeah, who are so rational.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right right now? I know. And what the Governor's saying
is if we're all just a little bit better to
each other once in a while, it can help with
these things. But that's not the question. The question is
when you have people who are criminally dangerous and insane,
that little extra drop of retsin that says, oh, you're
you're dangerous and your nuts. What are we supposed to
(11:00):
do with you? The answer can't be, Jim, why don't
you smile? That's not gonna help. But then the governor said,
and this is the part where you can you can
disagree with his assessment there of what are you talking
about all you want? But he said, look, I don't
(11:20):
think there's anything government can do to improve mental health.
If we're talking about improving it, I don't think the
Nebraska unicameral or a smile from a stranger is suddenly
going to improve mental health. If you have someone who
(11:44):
is criminally insanely dangerous, but the answer can't be when
you have someone who two years ago does all the
things we just detail where she did in the home
and then at the church, the answer can't be, well,
we can't keep her anywhere. So I guess we just
(12:06):
not guilty by reason of insanity and you're free to go.
But hey, and I'm serious, you got to check in
with a mental health counselor wants every blue moon or whatever,
which is what she was supposed to do. Her next
check in was coming up here in two months. She's
not gonna make it. She did. She was shot and
(12:26):
killed in the Walmart parking lot at seventy second and
Pine Tuesday morning. And sadly, for the next round of
people who are criminally insanely dangerous, that is probably how
they're going to meet their end as well. When you
have someone who is that level of dangerous, does anyone,
(12:49):
I mean, does anyone really think the best thing for them,
for them, or anyone, including this three year old kid, Kyler,
does anyone really think the best thing for them is
to be out just walking around? What has she been?
I keep asking this question. I don't know that we'll
ever really get the answer. Where's she been for the
(13:12):
last two years. Two years ago, she's trying to light
up her dad and the church. And then on Tuesday
she tried to stab a kid. She gets shot and killed.
Where's she been for two years?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
I don't know, but it sounds like she lost her
best chance for some kind of help with the with
the priest. I think that would have been her, probably
with that kind of strength that you mentioned. Yep, that's
drugs or.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Or whatever. Yeah. Whatever. The family of this kid now
we're in the throes of their own struggle. Mom talked
to the news yesterday. First Alert six News with the
story here said the mom said, yeah, I went on
and why someone really needed to box her out on Tuesday.
(13:56):
She went on social media Tuesday night. This is after
she gets to call at work in Lincoln on Tuesday morning.
Your kids at the hospital, Wait what and then someone's
trying to explain what happened. She's trying to rationalize all
this stuff and also drive to Omaha as fast as
she can. And then that night, after the kid goes
(14:17):
into surgery, comes out, turns out he's gonna be okay
as well as can be expected, she goes on social media.
She says I finally had to stop scrolling. I saw
so many comments from people said the officers shouldn't have
shot the woman who had a knife against her son
and cut him twice and was gonna do it again.
(14:38):
And people are like, I don't know why the cops
had to shoot her. They could have just tased her.
They could have probably talked her down. She didn't really
want to hurt this kid. She already hurt him twice.
No tell him what she was gonna do. You see
that look on her face and people look and see
the cop as anything other than a hero. And the
mom was seeing these comments, What is the matter with you?
(14:59):
P You decide to go on there and criticize the
people who saved this kid's life when the mom is
looking at social media. She shouldn't have been looking at
social media. But I don't blame her. Her head's spinning
out of control all day. What do you think is
gonna happen? This kid's got five siblings also dealing with
(15:21):
what happened to their brother. The brother didn't even cry
about any of it until finally he had to go
to surgery and had to leave his dad's side. That's
the first time he cried, he's a tough guy. We'll
see if we talked about this yesterday, what the rest
of his life is, because he's going to be asked
(15:41):
what happened with the side of your head there from
well intentioned people who don't know better than to ask
those questions. Never ask someone, hey, what happened to your face?
Just don't ask that question. How'd you get that scar?
I mean, it's fine you know someone for a while, friends,
you're I disagree in a relationship coworker. Well, even in
(16:05):
that instance, let's say you're dating someone for three years
and you just dieing and know how they get the scar?
You don't even ask him if they don't volunteer the information,
don't ask. No.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I disagree with everything with not asking because as little
kids there, he's three, Yeah, when he goes gets into school,
little kids are gonna ask.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Little kids are gonna ask, and you know.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
What, that's going to give him the tools he needs
to get through life with this scar. Yeah, because if
nobody asks asks him his whole life, which that wouldn't
happen anyway, But if nobody asks him his whole life,
then he's just going to walk around like but I
don't know why nobody notices this or you know, nobody
(16:49):
wants nobody wants to pay attention to me. Am I
that invisible?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
You go that route, but you you build up your
ability to deal with pull in kindergarten, in first grade,
in grade school, and so many kids today are not
getting that. So I hope that they do ask about it.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah. I used to have a little and they will
their kids, their kids if if I walked in I
got a scar on my face and if a kid
noticed it, they're going to ask, what happened to your face?
What happened to your face? Kid? You know you can't
say that though you're supposed to be the adult.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
But I had a little, well big freckle on my
eyebrow growing up.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
It's gone growing up in grade school, junior high, and
people would ask me and tease me about it because
it looked like a little map actually looked like a
little map of Australia. A freckle looked like, Yeah, it
was pretty good. I mean obviously you could see it
was pretty good size, and it faded over the years
and it's gone now and that's great.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah, that was probably a birthmark.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
No, it was a freckle, because birthmarks don't go away,
I guess. I mean you could call it a birth
smarts go away.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
My freckles seemed to well, it's going to multiply. It
moved out in the sun. We're getting into freckles season
on my stupid face.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, the point is maybe it just lightened so much
or faded so much, I barely even notice it. But
the point is kids would always tease me about it
growing up, and I am glad about that. I wasn't
at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
No, of course not. And if it wasn't that, it'd
be something else, right, kids, And these are some of
your best friends.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Who teach me.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
I know. That's how it goes.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Thro the cur I know, well, thanks for the help, but.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
By I don't know. Some of we all got teased
mercilessly growing up in the seventies, eighties, even throughout the
early nineties. And then it changed where you're like, you
can't do anything. But some of us got tough, some
of us got therapy, some combination of the two. I
don't know, but we should do a topic someday on
(18:57):
how'd you get that scar? And you'd tell a story
about how you got your scar. That'd be a good
topic for kfab nations someday. But my story is so boring.
Moe's surgery. Who's Moe. He's the guy that runs most tavern.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, but that's as an adult, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, it was just a few years ago. Yeah, I know,
and it'll be one of many. I got a whole lifetime. Yeah.
When my dermatologist says I bought a yacht, it's the
S S Voorhees, I'm like, yeah, she knows this is
I'm putting her kids through college. Scotties News Radio eleven KFAB.
(19:39):
I'm looking at the social media account of the mom
of three year old Kyler, and I don't know if
she knows how public all this stuff is. I'll let
some of her story be her story. I will relate
that she did post yesterday when the Omaha Police Department
identified the officers involved stopping the threat that had already
(20:03):
cut her son twice, and who knows what she was
gonna do next they stopped that threat, she posted these
two men who risk their lives every day and have
for more than two decades, saved my son's life. They
are true heroes. Yeah, she was trying to deal with
(20:25):
all of that. Just very very scary stuff. You know,
when people look at what are we going to do
with mental health? I mean, the answer can't be I
don't know nothing, just hope that for the I mean,
there are so many families who see this in kids
who then become teenagers and then and then the families
(20:49):
realize there is nothing we can do. And we and
a lot of people think until you go through something
like that, you think that you just go to I
don't know, the police, he's a judge, one of the
mental health organizations around town, and say my kid is dangerous,
tried to smoke the cat, and we're we have concerns,
(21:14):
and then they say we'll take it from here. Thanks
so much. But that's not what happens. That's not what
can happen. That's not what we as a society have
decided we want to allow to happen. And I know
the issue is like, well, what do you do? Well,
no one wants to really hear that, and the answer
(21:36):
is the same as what used to happen. You have
someone committed. But if we do that, then there I know,
it's it's it's not it's not a comfortable conversation to have.
And basically, when you are part of the process of
trying to get someone committed there, it's probably a lot
(22:01):
involved there that we can come up with scenarios that
would make us nervous when your rights are taken away,
whether that is your right to freedom, whether that's your
right to a firearm. And someone says, yeah, I think
that guy is crazy dangerous. How do you know that
he cut me off in traffic and voted for Trump?
(22:22):
And then you get some judge that says voted for Trump.
Oh my gosh, that person shouldn't be a lot And
then they lock you up and you get a lobotomy
and you got a permanent grin on your face.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Wouldn't one answer possibly be that when a judge decides
that you're criminally insane, that because we talked about the jailing,
the prison system not able to handle that kind of stuff.
And then I'm sure that they actually do. I'm sure
they're in there, but couldn't we just have an extra
(22:55):
wing or something like that, rather than building new asylums,
have places for at least the criminally insane.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
But that's fine, I mean, I get when you start
talking about you need to have an asylum where people
can be committed, and people say, but they're gonna take
anyone who eats meat and voted for Trump and they're
gonna lock them up, They're gonna have them committed. Okay,
Well that's not criminally insane, no, I know. So somewhere
(23:24):
between that and trying to kill everybody with knives and fire,
which is what this woman was doing, somewhere closer to
that ladder end of the spectrum is probably an okay
place where we say, all right, due to this person's actions,
you have been committed to Shady Acre's looney bin, and
(23:48):
your family can visit you tuesdays after three o'clock. I mean,
is anyone really all that? But we don't do that.
I mean, there's even a story in the news today
that says scientists now say that lobsters definitely feel pain
when boiled alive, and we need to stop doing that.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
We won't really know why that was ever a question.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We won't even boil crustaceans, right, what do you think
we're gonna do to the person who commits all these
these crimes? And like, well, we think we should take
her rights away. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, lobsters
sometimes have more rights than people taking their toddlers to
a grocery store. People are looking out more for lobsters
(24:37):
than kids in our community. Yeah, I'm thinking about taking
my kid to a place where there could be someone
dangerously out there trying to get trying to stab him.
Can you guys do something about that? No, no, no,
we're trying to save the lobsters right now, your kid.
I don't know. That's there's a that's that's a slippery
(24:58):
slope to go down. But the love, if we stop going,
what are we going to do to lobsters? Now? We
have to do like a special lethal injection, and we
can't get the drugs to deal with that, and it's
going to cost a lot of money, and next thing
you know, lobsters are going to be expensive.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Wait a minute, what.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Scott Boys News Radio eleven ten kfab That's what I'd
say too when they came to me and said, I
need the special serum to be able to sedate the
lobster so it doesn't feel any pain. How much is that,
I say, Oh? For the lobsters market price That's what
I'd say. Nice, thank you. Here's a name that has
come up quite a bit on the radio over the
(25:40):
last couple of years, and certainly a last name that
has been a part of the fabric of our lives
for the last few generations, and OURFK. Junior is the
subject of a new book called Our FK Junior, The
Fall and Rise. The author Isabelle Vincent. Joins us now
on news Radio eleven ten. AFA B, Good morning, thanks
(26:01):
so much for being a part of the show.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Good morning, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
What made you decide RFK Junior would be an enthralling
subject for a book?
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Well, so I started looking at him thirteen years ago
when after the death of his the suicide of his
second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, and at that time a
source of mine who knew her well, had shown me
some of his diaries. And the diaries were fascinating. I mean,
(26:32):
I worked for the New York Posts. We wrote a
few stories at that time, but there was so much
more about this man and the complexity of this man
that came out in these diaries. One thing his whole
life has been predicated on, you know, the assassination of
his father when he was when he was fourteen years old.
I mean that sent him into a downward spiral of
(26:55):
you know, drug use, that got him kicked out of
two boarding schools. It really, it really affected him. And
what also affected him was the fact that, you know,
he was his father's namesake, so the third of eleven
kids of Robert Kennedy and ethel Skaykole, who was the
one who was supposed to go in his father's footsteps.
(27:16):
And I think that amount of pressure on him really
screwed him up for a long time, because the diaries
are full of him beating up on himself, you know,
not being able to fulfill that destiny. At one point,
he talks about his daddy, says, I know daddy, and
he calls him daddy, which I found very you know,
very moving. Daddy was looking down from at him from
(27:39):
heaven and that he still loved him, but he knew
he was failing him, and so his I wasn't so
when he when he did run for president, I wasn't
surprised because this is something that you know, he's been
told his whole life, and it's something that he's wanted
to do.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
His whole life there, any son is trying to measure
up to his father. I mean, I I'm trying to
play golf as well as my dad, and he's into
his eighties now, and he still beats me all the time. There,
Trying to measure up to your father can be a
difficult thing. When your dad is Bobby Kennedy and someone
who was assassinated like your uncle was when you were
(28:20):
a little kid, I can't even imagine. So now he's
in a Puerto Rican prison writing these things down, having
to sit alone there and come to grips with where
his life is. That wasn't you know, terribly long ago.
How old was he when when he was going through this.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I think he was in his forties. He was in
his forties at the time.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, he wasn't some misguided teenager.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
No, he was in his forties and he'd gone through
the gamut of you know, addiction to women, addiction to
addiction to drugs. He was, you know, he finally found
a purpose in his life, which was the environmental movement.
But you know, after the prison, after his time in prison,
you know, as he's traveling the country and he's giving
(29:05):
all these speeches about the environment. He says, he writes
down that, you know, people come up to him and
say that they've that his speeches have really inspired them.
And he says of himself, I don't want to just
become this gentleman environmentalist. I want to make change. I
want to I want to do something that has meaning.
(29:25):
And so you know he's thinking at that time that
he wants to go he wants to do something in
national office. And you know, it takes him a while.
It's twenty three years later he's running for president. But
it was for me, it was revelatory, like just just
(29:46):
reading this and looking at him with his faults and
also but just this this constant striving to And you know,
I spoke to friends of his who actually had never
s the press before, and they said that he really
believes that he's doing good in the world.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The book, yeah, I'll jump in here. The book is
called RFK Junior, The Fall and Rise. We're talking with
the author of this book Isabelle's Evincent. Now, as you said,
you're a journalist with the New York Post, so it
doesn't sound to me based on what you've been saying
here this morning, Isabelle that you wrote this with any
kind of politics really in mind. This wasn't a glory
(30:29):
piece to look how great he is, nor was it
a hit piece. But when it comes to RFK Junior,
if you say anything about him, you're going to have
half the country suddenly say, how dare you, you know,
say anything good, bad, or even indifferent about him? Because
there are people who hate him. And these are just
members of his own family, right.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, so publicly a lot of his siblings have gone
against them. And you know, when he was running, they said, well,
we're going to support Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz. But
you know that's the point. I'm not a columnist. I'm
from Canada. I didn't know much about the Kennedy's when
I moved here. I've been here eighteen years and I
was just like, I've struck. And I think that is
(31:13):
helpful in my situation because I look at things as
I still look at things, as somewhat of a foreigner,
and I was struck by just how interesting all of
this was. And if you remove the political lens and
you just look at him as a person, he's a
very complex man, as we all are. But I don't
(31:35):
think that gets communicated at all.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I don't know if there's a more famous name in
American at least modern history than Kennedy. And you've got
every single I don't know that anyone and the Kennedy
family has ever stood up for him, and he bears
that name. Does it bother him that his family has
basically shunned him from the Kennedy empire?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
You know? I don't. I don't think that they've completely
done that. I think that he's still close to the siblings,
even the siblings who've who've who've completely gone against him publicly,
like his sister Carrie, who runs his younger sister, Carrie,
who runs the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation, and
(32:21):
she's come out and said, you know, denounced him in
various ways, but you know, they have a long history.
These are these are kids who are united also by
you know, a terrible tragedy. So yeah, publicly they're they're
going against him, but in private, I'm not so sure.
I mean, they may be, you know, they may be
(32:42):
mad at him, but are they you know, has there
been like a huge break. I'm not I'm not convinced
of that.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Does your book detail his time as Director of Health
and Human Services, especially asking questions about links between vaccines
and things like autism or what's going on with their food?
Very controversial. How did you deal with that in this book?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
So my my book takes him from you know, from
from his childhood to just after he was uh named
Health and Human Services Secretary. So I don't get too
much into that because of because of deadline pressure at
the time. I mean, I had to hand in the
(33:24):
book shortly after he was shortly after he entered the cabinet.
So so there's not much of that. There's there's you know,
the book does deal with the presidential campaign and and
but he's no, he's no stranger to controversy. I mean
his whole life he's been controversial. He's you know, when
(33:46):
he was in the environmental movement, people got mad at
him because he didn't listen. That was the you know,
that was what I the most. That was the thing
that kept coming back to, you know, with all the
people I interviewed, it's like he believes one way, it's
his way or the highway. He's not going to change.
So he ruffled. He evokes strong reactions from people, and
(34:10):
he always.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Has certainly and his time in the Trump administration. That
book is not written yet. Isabelle Vincent RFK Junior, The
Fall and Rise. Thank you very much for being on
the program today. Good talking to you, talking to you. Yeah,
I'll be anxious to see the follow up book on
RFK Junior in his time in the Trump administration because
I still don't know is Trump using him as an
(34:33):
asset or has is he still kind of using him
as a political tool, because he definitely was when it
was suddenly like, all right, we got to get RFK
Junior out of this race because he's going to take
away from me. But I got to get him on
my side, have him endorsed me, will give him a
cabinet position. We'll let him go out there and do
his thing. And I mean it looks like RFK Junior
(34:54):
has been able to do some of that. I think
Trump was correctly using him as aolitical tool in this time.
I'm not saying that as a real big negative there.
I mean, but now he's in your administration. I've always
credited RFK Junior with asking the right questions about everything
related to vaccines and medicines and the food. I mean,
(35:18):
ask the right questions. And now he has the opportunity
to get in there and do some of the stuff
to be able to enlighten us on some of these
things that he's been saying. Will he have the opportunity
to do so? Or the American people like, look, I
don't need that guy, you know, in the Trump administration
taking away maho hoes and trying to you know, save
(35:41):
my kids from whatever might be going on with the vaccines.
I mean, the science is clear on this one, is it?
Because every generation we learn new things about the science
that was cleared the past generation, and now they're like, hey,
maybe we should stop taking the lilamide. You know, so
four out of five doctors recommend to lilamite. You know,
So is he asking the right question? Is he going
(36:03):
to be able to do his thing? I guess that'll
be the next book. This book is called RFK Junior,
The Fall and Rise. Scott Bies News Radio eleven ten
kfab
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