Don and John: President Trump Looks to Leave His Mark on the Kennedy Legacy

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. & Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC A-SA 2.0 for Wikimedia Commons

Edited by Nick Witkowski, Juliette Calderon, Owen Andrews, and Sarah Ahmad

Within the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s second term in the Oval Office, the President signed more than seventy executive orders, from imposing tariffs to restricting healthcare policy. Trump has also made countless decisions, statements, and appointments that have set an audacious tone for this new administration. Among these are three particular developments that revise the history and legacy of President Kennedy and the Kennedy family. By ordering the previously classified documents surrounding the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy to be revealed to the public, establishing himself as Chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and appointing former President Kennedy’s nephew and former Attorney General Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as his secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump has already made sweeping changes that impact how the Kennedy presidency and the lasting legacy of his family will be viewed.   

As the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy served one of the shortest terms in the history of the American presidency. Elected in 1960 and Commander-in-Chief until his tragic assassination in 1963, President Kennedy was one of the most iconic and well-known figures at the time, both domestically and internationally. He is known best for his balance of soft power and hard power in foreign policy, handling everything from the Bay of Pigs invasion to mounting tensions with the former Soviet Union. At home, President Kennedy was credited with founding the Peace Corps, kickstarting the race to the moon, and supporting the Civil Rights Movement. It was this measured blend of activism and restraint, as well as his iconic charisma and celebrity persona, that endeared Americans and non-Americans alike to the president. His wife, Jacqueline, and brother, Robert, who served as attorney general in his brother’s administration, were nearly as iconic and influential, bolstering the public image and legacy of the Kennedy family for decades to come. President Kennedy and his brother were both shot and killed at the peak of their influence—John during his term as president and Robert during his campaign for the 1968 presidential election—during the 1960s, with their deaths becoming a national tragedy for the country’s most prominent political family. In the decades following his death, the myth-like persona of President John F. Kennedy continued to grow, and he remains one of the most popular, recognizable, and influential figures in American history. 

President Trump’s executive order to release documents to the public regarding the assassinations of former President Kennedy and former United States Attorney General Kennedy, documents that have been classified to this point, reflects a violation of the privacy of the Kennedy family and a thinly veiled decision to equate the two presidents. President Trump ordered the full release of previously classified medical and intelligence records on the assassinations, seeking to position him as the president who ended decades of conspiracy and intrigue. On the one hand, this will increase transparency and accountability for the federal government, finally answering questions about decades-long conspiracies and about one of the country’s most famous families. On the other, this order is an unnecessary violation of the Kennedy family’s privacy and undercuts the authority of government agencies such as the FBI and CIA. President Trump’s audacious political maneuver will naturally connect the two presidents as significant figures in the history of one of the country’s darkest moments. The fact that minimal new information was found by the release of the documents further reflects the superfluous nature of such a political stunt in the first place. In revealing the truth behind the Kennedy assassinations to the public, the declassification of these documents acts as more of a detriment to Trump’s political character than it benefits his perception, ultimately not aligning him with Kennedy on any substantive matters. 

Furthermore, President Trump’s direct involvement with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts reflects an unprecedented degree of involvement by the federal government in the fine arts and adds a complicating — albeit confusing — element to a monument indicative of President Kennedy’s values. On February 7th, 2025, President Trump announced that he would be firing multiple members of the board of the Kennedy Center, including the chairman, and appointing himself as the new chairman. This was a somewhat bizarre political move, seeking to root out any lingering legacy of the outgoing Biden administration. However, the chairman of the board at the time of the announcement, David M. Rubenstein, had held the position for over a decade and was initially appointed by former President George W. Bush. 

Following through on his plan less than a week later, on February 12, Trump declared the firing of eighteen members of the Kennedy Center board, as well as the president, Deborah F. Rutter, who had held that position for more than a decade. The fired board members were all appointed by former President Biden during the previous administration and were replaced largely by loyalists and affiliates of the Trump campaign. This decision shocked and outraged members of both the political and artistic communities, leading to the resignation of some of the Center’s most high-profile and well-respected advisors. In a move that politicized and weaponized one of the country’s most established institutions of artistic appreciation, President Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center leadership is both concerning and unprecedented. By seeking to alter the history of the Kennedy Center, which has for decades remained an almost universally appreciated and agreed-upon benefit to the country, President Trump makes the Center appear uncharacteristically partisan and himself opposed to cooperation. 

The Kennedy family is also making its mark on Trump in more direct ways, particularly through the work of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. In the months leading up to the 2024 election, one candidate received a flurry of press for his unique voice, health policies that broke from proven scientific fact, and a last name synonymous with American politics. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President Kennedy and the son of the former attorney general, is infamous for his concerning policy stances and affiliation with the new Trump administration. After endorsing President Trump in August 2024 and simultaneously ending his doomed third-party campaign, Kennedy found himself to be a close and powerful ally of the new president’s cabinet. President Trump nominated Kennedy to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services, a position that provides its holder oversight and national influence on vaccines, medical testing, and how the medical sector in the United States will be shaped. Following a tumultuous hearing process that investigated and scrutinized, among other things, Kennedy’s hesitancy to embrace vaccines and his claim that he had a parasitic worm living in his brain, Kennedy was ultimately approved by the Senate, placing him in charge of a federal regulatory body with incredible power and oversight. 

The involvement of Kennedy in Trump’s administration marks an important and potentially dangerous shift in the future of the country’s health policy, a detriment to both the American public and the Kennedy legacy. Kennedy has become only the second member of his family to serve in the United States federal government since his father and has the potential to destabilize the largely positive reputation that has accompanied the Kennedy name for more than half a century. Robert F. Kennedy has already indicated the general direction in which he will lead the Department of Health and Human Services, largely characterized by distrust in science, rejection of modern medical technology, and the spread of baseless conspiracy theories. From advising against vaccinations to making largely unsubstantiated claims regarding “ultra-processed food” to spearheading the removal of fluoride from drinking water at the national level, the speed and nature of Kennedy’s actions have already concerned the country’s top medical officials — of whom Kennedy is not a member. The latest in a long familial line of celebrated and iconic figures throughout American history, Kennedy has already shifted the nature of the legacy that surrounds his surname. By rejecting science, modernization, and government transparency at the highest levels, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has undermined principles for which his uncle and father, among others, worked hard to support. The decision to inflate Kennedy’s platform and involvement in the federal government has short-term consequences for the health and safety of the American public. But it is the lasting, irreversible detriment to the legacy of the Kennedy name that will prove to be the most consequential contribution of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s time in office. 

While President Trump is only in the early stages of his second term as president, he has already indicated the dynamic—and sometimes strange—decisions that will characterize his administration, a shocking number of which relate to the legacy of President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. Because of the historically high reputation of the Kennedy administration and the consensus opinion that President Kennedy ranks among the best executives in the nation’s history, it is understandable that President Trump would seek to increase public opinion of himself by latching on to the legacy of President Kennedy. Ultimately, these decisions do less to improve impressions of President Trump than they do to lower the value of the Kennedy family and administration in the minds of the American public. Only time will tell if Trump’s decisions are truly successful in changing public opinion on his presidency. However, Trump’s actions throughout his second term set a dangerous example for a president’s ability to align themselves with national heroes and diminish the legacy of an internationally recognized martyr of diplomacy.