Listen Now: The Sage Steele Show | RFK Jr.
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I'm going to be honest, and I was annoyed, upset with your family recently when in Philadelphia. It's one thing to vote for a different candidate. It's another thing for the, what, 15 people in the Kennedy family to stand on a stage at a rally for Joe Biden when they know that— Six. Six. It was only six.

Okay, for a huge portion, big names, people that mean something in your life from day one, to stand on that stage publicly and endorse Joe Biden instead of you. And even if they were going to vote for Joe Biden, to go to those lengths to support him. You've said, okay, I love my family. We all have different politics. We all have different opinions. I believe you. Was there not a part of you that thought,

What the heck? Why? Why, as my family members, go to that level to say, "No, I am against my brother, my cousin, etc. and with this man." That annoyed me as a human. Yeah. It wasn't a pleasant experience for me, but here's how I look at it, which is first of all,

You know, we were, well, my family was raised in a milieu where we argue with each other. We differ on political issues. We were raised, we debated every night at the dinner table. My father orchestrated debates and

We were taught to disagree with each other with passion, with good information, but at the same time to love each other. And, you know, I understand why people in my family are dismayed about me running. There's five members of my family that have jobs with the administration or rely on them for their work. President Biden has, you know, is a long-term friend of me and my family.

He has a statue of my father behind him in the Oval Office. So, you know, I see why. And, you know, my family's tied in with the DNC. They don't like what I'm doing. But, you know, you asked a more personal question about how I internalize that. And what I believe is that any hardship that I encounter, I have to look at as a gift.

Oh, I need to process everything as not as something that's meant to happen and that I'm meant to learn from it and that I need to be grateful for it. And everything is teaching me something and it's there to teach me something. So I'm not, I don't spend any of my life in living in resentments. If you are resentful about somebody, it's like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. It's corrosive.

And I am very disciplined about never going there. Isn't there a difference between resentment and hurt? Yeah, but again, my way of processing the experience of life is to say,

These things ultimately are gifts for me. And every person in my life who I've admired historically

Charles Darwin to Alexander the Great to, you know, to Lewis and Clark to, you know, Richard Speaks and, you know, any great St. Francis, St. Augustine, they all went through periods in their lives where they were disparaged by friends, by family, rejected by their communities. Winston Churchill, another great example. Yeah, sure.

And if you want to do something worthwhile in your life, you have to expect that that's what you're going to go through. And the reason that people, not more people are doing what I'm doing.

is because if it were easy, they'd do it. It's difficult, and that's part of the difficulty. But I'm very disciplined about not carrying that stuff around. I think that's the right word, discipline. Either as hurt or as anger. That's beautiful. If there's a microsecond in my head that says, oh, that's hurtful,

I have now developed the ability to immediately change it and say that means it's good. You know, if somebody, listen, God is talking to you through every encounter that you have. Everybody that you meet is a messenger. Absolutely. And if somebody throws you the finger on a highway,

You have to think to yourself, as God, what does he want me to learn from this experience? What does he want me to do with this interaction? Does he want me to be kind? Does he want me to pray for that person? So are you praying for your family? Yeah, of course. I mean, I don't mean that literally, but as they are doing something that might be hurtful for a split second and then okay. Yeah, absolutely. And have you had conversations with them since? Yes, I have. I mean, one of the things is,

Several of them have said that, you know, they've sent me notes saying we made sure not to criticize you. In an earlier iteration, some of them said a couple of things about me. At this time, they said, and I told them I had dinner with my wife.

Maria Shriver and one of my brothers who was there, Max, the other day. And I said, look, I really don't mind you guys doing this with, you know, endorsing Biden. But I don't want you to be saying, and I don't think it makes you look good. Right. And be saying, you know, bad things about me. And it's hurtful to my children. And, you know, I think the whole family. So I think they made an effort not to do that. And they all, they, several of them said to me,

that they had used those moments with President Biden to ask him to provide me Secret Service protection. And, you know, so I'm happy with that. I think that that maybe he'll, you know, reconsider his decision. The fact that it's even a decision