Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy who is running for Congress in New York, earlier this year posted an offensive comment on social media about procuring “Jew blood” and male semen for an energy recipe.
Schlossberg, the 32-year-old Kennedy scion, has deleted the Jan. 20 post, in which he appeared to mock his mother’s cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
“I’ll have a MAHA energy ball,” wrote Schlossberg. He proposed a recipe that called for several ingredients, including “2 oz of Jew blood (ashkenazi not Sephardic).”
“Baked at 300degrees until totally dry like your wife,” wrote Schlossberg, a Yale graduate with law and business degrees from Harvard.
Schlossberg appeared to be mocking his relative’s past statements in which he propagated a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 had been developed to spare some Asians and Ashkenazi Jews, who represent 70-80 percent of the Jewish population.
While Schlossberg’s father is Jewish, the post’s reference to Jews’ genetic characteristics—a sensitive issue considering the malignant role that apocryphal racial theories about Jews played during centuries of anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust—could raise questions about Schlossberg’s temperament as he runs to replace outgoing Rep. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), a Jewish Democrat who is retiring next year.
Schlossberg has defended Zohran Mamdani (D.), New York City’s virulently anti-Israel mayor-elect, from accusations of anti-Semitism, saying that, “If you think that Zohran doesn’t like Jews, you’re f*cking brainwashed” and that “We cannot have this thing where if you disagree with Israeli policy, you hate Jews. That’s not good and that’s not fighting antisemitism. That’s horsesh*t. That’s a cop-out.”
And in a lengthy New York Times profile by Maureen Dowd (who rarely writes profiles anymore) that was published Tuesday evening, Schlossberg cited his father’s Jewish heritage as a reason he can empathize with Jews.
“I’m very sensitive to the Jewish community’s concerns, because I feel them, too,” he told Dowd in the profile, for which he posed for videos dancing around in a dress shirt and skinny tie. “It bothers me.”
He used a Yiddish word to describe his paternal grandfather who “was in the shmatte business … I think that I’m a Schlossberg, too.” Schlossberg told Jewish publication Hey Alma last year that he identifies “culturally” as Jewish but is not “technically” Jewish because his mother is Catholic.
The now-deleted tweet about Ashkenazi blood is a particularly offensive example of what’s been typical behavior for Schlossberg, whose social media accounts—now being cleaned up—are filled with sexually explicit rants and raves about his political opponents. In one deleted post, Schlossberg trolled Elon Musk for “letting China eat out your ass while you piss on the constitution.” In another post, Schlossberg asked whether his grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was “hotter” than second lady Usha Vance, and he posted a doctored photo joking that he’d fathered one of Vance’s children.
Schlossberg’s erratic online behavior has annoyed some family members. Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the New York Post she hoped Schlossberg “gets the help he needs.” For his part, Schlossberg has said the only way he could get attention for his denunciations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was to behave bizarrely.
Schlossberg’s mother, former ambassador Caroline Kennedy, has reportedly said she “doesn’t want” her son to run for Congress, citing concerns about his safety in a polarized political environment. But she spoke to the Times for the Dowd profile, praising her son’s “inner strength” he gained after injuring his back while playing basketball. The Times compared his subsequent back pain to that which his grandfather suffered while president.
Schlossberg’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
