WASHINGTON — A post on X by Georgia Congressman Mike Collins where he appeared to compare recent news about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his father’s and uncle’s untimely deaths drew swift and widespread criticism Wednesday.
It was the second time in less than a week that a post on Collins’ feed on a social media site prompted a backlash. But it joins a growing list of problematic and controversial posts by the Jackson Republican who is in his first term in the U.S. House.
The latest trouble for Collins came as he responded to reports by The New York Times about Kennedy’s testimony in a 2012 deposition about memory loss that he was experiencing at the time. Kennedy said that a doctor told him scans showed the issue “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
Kennedy is running for president as an independent, and he is largely considered to be drawing support away from former President Donald Trump. His campaign is built in part on Kennedy presenting himself as a younger and fresher voice in politics compared with Trump and President Joe Biden.
Collins, who is a Trump surrogate and known for sarcastic and biting social media posts, laid into Kennedy with a crass reference.
“You either die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole in the brain,” Collins wrote.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 after a gunman shot him in his head and back while he rode in a motorcade in Dallas. Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was killed in Los Angeles five years later while campaigning for president. He was shot several times, including in the back of his head; the bullet left fragments in his brain.
Gun control activist Fred Guttenberg, whose son was killed in a 2018 shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school, lobbed an expletive at Collins in response.
“This was not even close to funny,” Guttenberg wrote. “I guess to a demented person like you, this might seem like a normal thing to say. However, for the rest of us, just a reminder to VOTE for people who don’t joke about gun violence.”
A spokeswoman for Collins said the post is a reference to a famous line from the movie “Batman: The Dark Knight”: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
The spokeswoman did not explain why Collins replaced the words in the quote with what appeared to be direct references to the deaths of the elder Kennedys.
Over the weekend Collins faced widespread rebukes, including from the Georgia NAACP, after sharing a video of counterprotesters at the University of Mississippi shouting at a pro-Palestinian protester, a Black woman. One student in the video appeared to be making monkey sounds and gestures toward the woman.
On Monday, Collins released a statement acknowledging the criticism and clarifying his objective in reposting the video.
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