The Real Reason RFK Jr. Didn’t Attend Tatiana Schlossberg’s Funeral After Reports He Was ‘Banned’ From the Service to ‘Shield’ the Family
StyleCaster Editors
Family is complicated. We’ve seen it with the British royal family, and even the Trump family. Being famous doesn’t change that. And this applies to the Kennedy family, too. It’s just that now, we’re seeing all play out on a big and devastating stage after the death of Tatiana Schlossberg.
Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s daughter and a granddaughter of former president John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The environmental journalist passed away on December 30, 2025, after battling acute myeloid leukemia for over a year. And as expected, her funeral service was attended by many big names in politics there to pay respects to the family. But one person was conspicuously missing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Schlossberg’s cousin.
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Among those who did attend the service, which was held at The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, were of course, Schlossberg’s parents and husband; her brother, Jack Schlossberg; former President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State John Kerry; Jill Biden and names like David Letterman and Seth Meyers. But neither RFK Jr nor his wife, Cheryl Hines, attended the service, which was by invitation only.
It is, perhaps, not really surprising considering the entire Kennedy family, including Schlossberg, her mother and her brother have sharply criticized RFK Jr. in the past for his actions as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services.
A little over a month before her death, Tatiana Schlossberg wrote an essay about her cancer battle where she described RFK Jr. as an “embarrassment” to the Kennedy family and discussed how his cuts to cancer research and other diseases had left her frightened and shaken as she was fighting blood cancer.
“I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” she said.
She also added, “I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings.”
Before the funeral a source had confirmed to Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice that RFK Jr. would be “banned” for the service. “’RFK Jr will not be invited, and the family made that decision intentionally. They are trying to shield the kids and manage their grief without extra public scrutiny or controversy,” the source said.
And the family’s issues with RFK Jr. are not just related to his job in the Trump administration. Last December, the Daily Mail reported the family was “disgusted, embarrassed, and pained” by revelations about his online philandering and sick sexual masturbatory fantasies” in the wake of the reveal that he had a relationship with journalist Olivia Nuzzi.
Caroline Kennedy, Schlossberg’s mother and JFK’s only daughter, has publicly labeled her first cousin Bobby, “a predator.”
All these things considered it’s easy to see why they wouldn’t want him at Tatiana Schlossberg’s, or anywhere around the family, for that matter.
