David Remnick: Even now, the Kennedy family appears in the media as the nation's royal family, a mix of political power and celebrity legacy as persistent in the modern American story as the Tudors and the Plantagenets were in Shakespeare's history plays. Six members of the family served in Congress. President John F. Kennedy remains a revered figure, and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was likely on his way to the White House when he, too, was assassinated. Bobby's son, a Kennedy of a very different ideological stripe, was running for president when he opted for an alliance with Donald Trump in exchange for a Cabinet post running Health and Human Services. You know what that's entailed.

Several Kennedy family members have spoken out against RFK's policies and his character, including his cousin, Jack Schlossberg. Schlossberg, who has a law and business degree from Harvard, became a public figure through social media, occasionally trolling the right like when he claimed that Usha Vance was carrying his child. When Schlossberg decided to run for Congress, the attention became a lot more focused and more critical.

Recent reporting in the New York Times suggested that he was not only inexperienced in politics, but unprofessional as a candidate. That's a conclusion that Schlossberg disputes and will discuss. He seems in some way a test case for how well or not social media influence can translate into electoral politics. The seat he's running for is also my district in Manhattan, and whoever wins it will be my representative in the House. I was eager to speak with Jack Schlossberg.

David Remnick: Jack, I first want to express my condolences about your sister who died some time ago and wrote an extraordinary piece that she just sent to me. "I don't know what I did to deserve that." I don't think we changed five words in the whole thing. It was extraordinary. You must miss her enormously.

Jack Schlossberg: I do. Tatiana was my best friend. We could finish each other's sentences, and I miss her every day. That piece was extraordinary, and it was classic Tatiana, who wrote it, didn't think it was good, and then sent it in, and it didn't need any edits. I remember reading that it was one of the top-read stories on the New Yorker page.

David Remnick: It was.

Jack Schlossberg: She was such an admirer and longtime reader of the New Yorker. I know her dream was to be published in that publication. I think it was fitting that she and only she could make such an impact with her writing. She was a beautiful writer.

David Remnick: Why did you decide to run into the teeth of such grief?

Jack Schlossberg: I wasn't planning on running for office now. I wasn't plotting and waiting in the wings for a seat to run for. It's an unlikely path that led me here. It started at the end of 2023. I went to law school, business school, I graduated, took the bar, and I finished all that. I thought I was going to be an environmental lawyer. I was excited because that's what I studied and that was what I cared about.

At the same time, I still am and always will be, irrespective of the decision to run for a second term. I'm a huge Joe Biden fan. I knew the truth, which was that he had accomplished so much in the first years of his term. I mean, biggest investment in energy and infrastructure in decades, ended our longest war, ended the pandemic. Nobody knew about this at the time. If you think back, it was a different world. Like, RFK Jr. was a Democrat running for president, and a Trump victory did not seem like an inevitability.

I decided to go work on the campaign, the Biden campaign at that time. Long story short, they hired me to help with youth voter engagement, but we didn't really see eye to eye on video stuff, so I left the campaign.

David Remnick: Tell me about that. What did you want to do and what did they want you to do?

Jack Schlossberg: I wanted to go hard after RFK Jr. At the time, there was a lot of risk aversion there. I quit because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't speak out in the way I wanted to. I got a lot of heat for that, but I knew I had to do it my way. I spent about a month writing over draft over draft over what statement I wanted to release about RFK Jr. One day I just picked up my phone out of my pocket and started talking to it and posted it.

He's trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories, and conflict for personal gain and fame. I've listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let's not be distracted again by somebody's vanity project. It went viral in a way that I never imagined. Overnight, I built a fan base that I was as surprised as anyone to have.

About a month later, I got a call from the Biden campaign, asking me to come back to make more videos, to speak at the DNC, to be a delegate from New York, and to travel to every swing state across the country, which I wasn't paid to do. I took upon myself, and I had a lot of success doing it, and I'm really proud of that. It showed me that I had something to offer the party in the social media engagement that I was getting, not because I was in an ad campaign or a movie star, but because I was speaking truth to power about our political systems.

David Remnick: Do you think there are things that you did before on TikTok that you wouldn't do now, now that you're wearing a shirt and tie and campaigning? Did you put on a blonde wig and imitate Putin and some of the crazier things you did?

Vlad: This is me, Vlad. I just want to say again point I'm making stories. This is why I vote for RFK Jr. I am from Russia. He's hero of Russia.

Jack Schlossberg: Yes, I mean, I wouldn't call them crazy. I think satire is a really powerful political tool. I think that it's not like I was making videos that nobody was watching. I was breaking through pretty well.

David Remnick: Yes, you were.

Jack Schlossberg: I think, advocate raising awareness on issues for people who otherwise might not receive that information. The Internet and social media changes rapidly. The first stage of me going viral was very much happy, comedy, silly. This was a time when the 24 election had not been finished yet.

David Remnick: You've said, I've got a legal education and a lifetime of working on the issues I care about. You haven't worked as a lawyer post.

Jack Schlossberg: Not at a law firm.

David Remnick: Then how so?

Jack Schlossberg: How so what?

David Remnick: How did you use your legal education?

Jack Schlossberg: I think I understand that content creation is a new profession and that it's not synonymous for many people with a "real job". I've been arguing with evidence supported by facts, very clear arguments made on behalf of the issues that I think are important. Those issues are corruption of the Trump administration, his terrible, irresponsible foreign policy decisions, advocating and arguing for why the Democratic Party's history and current policies reflect putting a priority on organized labor and working families.

On social media, it's not like I was successful just because of my name. You have to make an argument in 90 seconds with a lot of complicated information and synthesizing that information, breaking it down into 1, 2, and 3 points. Having a conclusion, that's the exercise of law school.

David Remnick: Jack, somebody my age, my first memory is the death of your grandfather. That's a big set of imperatives to carry on your shoulders. When did this enter your life that you had this-- there was something unusual attached to your future?

Jack Schlossberg: There is that one moment that sticks out in my Life, and it's 10th grade history class, and we're learning about President Kennedy, and--

David Remnick: This is at the Collegiate School.

Jack Schlossberg: This is at the Collegiate School on the Upper West Side. Dr. Grossberg was giving us a lecture about the Kennedy administration. I felt uncomfortable, and I was goofing off in the back of class. She called on me because she knew I was in the back making trouble. She asked me about the Kennedy administration's policy in Laos. I wasn't familiar with that at the time. It was mortifying because I said I didn't know.

I went home, and I started reading Ted Sorensen's book on my grandfather, and I started listening and watching to his speeches every single day after school. I made myself do that before I started my homework every day, was listen to one speech or read a chapter of a book. I got really inspired by the story that I read. JFK sent a man to the moon. He drafted the Civil Rights Act, the Peace Corps. There are so many things about the progressive agenda supporting the arts that he represented, and that started or traced their origins back to the early 1960s.

David Remnick: It's a complex legacy as well, even for a liberal.

Jack Schlossberg: Yes.

David Remnick: Included in that is the beginnings of Vietnam, of the Bay of Pigs, all kinds of things on both a personal level and on a political level. How do you take all that in? I return to my original question. When did you start feeling that voice in your head in the ambient sound of your life that you've got to do something about that?

Jack Schlossberg: I've loved politics since I can remember, and I feel motivated by the call to answer-- Answering the call of public service is what President Kennedy represents. Sure, there are complications in his legacy and in other members of my family, but overall, it really stands for the progressive values that are under attack right now by President Trump. I mean, there's a reason President Trump fixates on John F. Kennedy and our family name. There's a reason why he renamed the Kennedy Center the Trump Kennedy Center.

David Remnick: Now you're-- I guess he was your granduncle and godfather. The late Ted Kennedy once ran for President, and he faced a correspondent named Roger Mudd. He was asked a very simple question. Why are you running for president? I think it's fair to say that he kicked the can.

Jack Schlossberg: That's right. Famously, yes.

David Remnick: Famously.

Roger Mudd: Why do you want to be president?

Ted Kennedy: Were I to make the announcement and to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country.

David Remnick: Why are you running for Congress? You're in my district.

Jack Schlossberg: I'm running because I want to pass laws. I want to pass laws that help the people in this district and in our country. I want to fight for federal funding for the district New York 12. I've released plans that I want to pass in Congress, like passing a renter's deduction so people can deduct their rent from their taxes. I want to make HIV medication free at the point of care. I want to make the child tax credit paid out monthly, not annually, which during COVID cut child poverty-- to historic lows.

David Remnick: Have you worked on behalf of any of those causes affirmatively and spent time on them? In other words, you have opinions. We all have opinions. What have you done affirmatively that gives confidence to a voter that says, this is a guy who selflessly worked on behalf of some of these things, whether at a lower level of politics or in hard volunteer work where he sweated it out?

Jack Schlossberg: Yes, absolutely.

David Remnick: Why do you deserve this seat?

Jack Schlossberg: I think my experience is why people are so excited about our campaign. I graduated with a JD MBA from a top university, and with that education, went and was a top surrogate volunteer for the Biden campaign, traveled to every single swing state in this country.

David Remnick: You did volunteer campaign work?

Jack Schlossberg: Yes, but I think it's much more significantly than that. I was a top surrogate for the campaign that traveled all over and inspired a new generation of Americans to believe in public service and politics and overnight built a audience of millions of people just using my own two thumbs on my social media and single handedly inspired them to volunteer for and be excited about the party in 2024. Nobody asked me to do that. Nobody showed me the roadmap for it.

I've been working on causes that I care about my entire life. I've been representing a family legacy that is synonymous with the Democratic Party and progressive values. In 2024--

David Remnick: What does that mean? Beyond the sheer presence of yourself?

Jack Schlossberg: Working for and with the John F. Kennedy Library, presenting the Profile in Courage Award every single Year. This year--

David Remnick: You presented the award.

Jack Schlossberg: Yes. Represent my family alongside my mother as ambassador to Japan. It might not sound like work to some people, and I'm not saying that that's a traditional job, but a lot of work that goes into it. As I said, I was in the middle of explaining. I created a platform to advocate for the party when nobody else had been and built a huge fan base doing that, and then created a media company with results that anyone comparable in that field would kill for. Just because I turned down millions of dollars in brand deals and book deals because I wanted not to be bought and paid for, I don't think means that that's not a job. I think that my experience is exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now from candidates.

[music]

David Remnick: I'm speaking with Jack Schlossberg, who's running for Congress. We'll continue in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio.

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David Remnick: This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with Jack Schlossberg. Schlossberg is a grandson of President Kennedy, and in November, he announced that he'd run for Congress in Manhattan. The incumbent, who's now retiring, is a liberal stalwart named Jerry Nadler, who began serving in Congress in 1992, just a few months before Jack Schlossberg was born.

In your previous interviews, you've said that money in politics is a very important issue to you.

Jack Schlossberg: I think it's the single most important issue facing our country and our party. I think even people do care a lot about this issue, and they don't even care about it enough. Citizens United has fundamentally changed our country. Super PACs are a huge part of the reason why our government does not function, why we can't get legislation passed.

David Remnick: How is your candidacy funded? You decided not to take PAC money.

Jack Schlossberg: Yes. On the first day of the campaign, I made a pledge. No super PAC money. I will disavow any super PAC support. No corporate PAC money. No money from big tech or AI. No special interest group money. I said that at a time when I did not realize my two main opponents, Alex Borros and Michael Asher, would accept tens of millions of dollars in super PAC money. Tens of millions of dollars from billionaires.

David Remnick: Okay, I understand that objection. They would turn around and say, but I'm not connected like our opponent. I don't have Bette Midler, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon donating to my campaign. I don't have a personal fortune that I can draw on.

Jack Schlossberg: First of all, each of them are millionaires, so that is irrelevant. Second of all, we need to explain this to people so they understand. There are two types of ways money gets into politics, the hard side and the soft side. I've accepted contributions on the hard side. That means if you or anybody, Lorne Michaels, whoever you just referenced, contributes to our campaign, that's a hard money side contribution that is limited at $3,500 for a primary, and it has to be disclosed. That is fundamentally different from a super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, and it's often not disclosed. That is how you get campaigns that can raise tens of millions of dollars.

We have outraised our opponents on the hard side, the campaign side, and people don't understand that even though we've outraised them and we've raised $3 million, which is in the upper echelon for any congressional campaign, that leaves us with a budget for paid media for the entire campaign. That is less than what they regularly spend my opponents in a single day. It's very important also to remember that Alex Boris is backed by a guy named Chris Larson. Chris Larson has a company called Ripple. Ripple has a super PAC that is actively funding Trump MAGA candidates around the country, five of whom just won their primaries. Micah Lasher's super PAC is funded by a billionaire who just spent tens of millions of dollars against--

David Remnick: Who is that?

Jack Schlossberg: Michael Bloomberg. Against Mayor Mamdani, trying to defeat the Democratic nominee for mayor in the last election.

David Remnick: Michael Bloomberg has also supported plenty of Democrats in terms of funding.

Jack Schlossberg: True, but I don't think that-- Doesn't really make a difference for me if you've supported some Democrats, if you're also actively supporting Republicans around the country.

David Remnick: Jack, you were ahead in the race by 5 points-

David Remnick: Like 8 or 10.

David Remnick: -and now you're behind.

Jack Schlossberg: According to some polls.

David Remnick: That was a precipitous dip. What seemed to happen is there is a piece in the New York Times that, among other things, described your campaign with a lot of reporting describing disorganization. After that article was published, I think your polls took a big hit. How do you respond to that Times piece?

Jack Schlossberg: There's one thing that is accurate in that article, and that's that we're different from the other campaigns, and that's by design. Most people don't know how campaigns are structured. A typical campaign has a campaign manager and then probably 10 different consulting firms, a compliance firm, a mail firm, a TV firm, a digital firm. That's the structure that I started with in the outset, that I quickly realized was not for me. The people quoted in that article, all of those stories and anecdotes date back to end of November, early December, when I hired several consulting firms that I quickly realized did not have much to offer me. I quickly decided to part ways and build a campaign structure that worked for me.

Look, that piece printed on the front page of the New York Times with a lot of anonymous sources, no accusations of any wrongdoing. I'm not here to complain about my press coverage, but I wish the media would cover my opponents with half the level of scrutiny that our campaign has gotten. The idea that I slept through my launch day is demonstrably false. Anonymous sources and disgruntled employees describing a campaign as erratic and chaotic. Not many people can keep up with the pace that we set.

David Remnick: Any one congressperson, if they get one initiative to the top of the heap, not just in one term, but in five terms, is lucky, unless they're Nancy Pelosi or something like that, but certainly a freshman. What would be the absolute top priority that you would be absolutely focused on?

Jack Schlossberg: I will answer your question, but I will start by saying that I don't think we can afford to set our sights on just one issue, and that the Democratic Party is about to face a question of whether or not we hold President Trump accountable, whether or not we try to impeach him and investigate and prosecute his cabinet for the crimes that have been committed.

David Remnick: You would move to impeach President Trump for what?

Jack Schlossberg: Absolutely. For bribery. He's made $4 billion so far this year, him and his family. He has signed contracts and made deals with foreign countries, following which-- after which his companies, his son's companies, have received preferable treatment, equity stake in large companies from those exact foreign governments. He has a cryptocurrency in his own name that he has sold using the power of the presidency. I think all of these things, bribery is specifically listed in the Constitution as a crime justifying impeachment.

The jet from Qatar, the stake in the tungsten mine in Kazakhstan that the Trump family organization has taken, the stock trading that the president has engaged in, especially recently in massive tech stocks, ahead of a visit to China, all of these things demand investigation, and we have to hold him accountable. That's a difference between me and the others running. The person leading in the polls right now, Michael Lasher, he does not think impeachment is worthy of the Democratic Party's time. He thinks it's a futile effort. He thinks it's going to be too hard. I think we have absolutely no choice.

David Remnick: Do you think members of Congress should be able to trade stocks?

Jack Schlossberg: Absolutely not. I think that's a no-brainer.

David Remnick: Does it worry you that Nancy Pelosi, who's probably your most prominent endorser, has done better in the stock market than one could even possibly imagine?

Jack Schlossberg: I think Nancy Pelosi is the backbone of our party. She exists in a system where she did nothing illegal, and I wouldn't trade stocks. I take it upon myself to do that. I'm not about to sit here and question and dismiss the tactics of the most effective progressive leader the Democratic Party's ever had, certainly in my lifetime.

David Remnick: It's not possible to both praise and at the same time criticize somebody like that?

Jack Schlossberg: I would not emulate her stock trading myself. I think that that's--

David Remnick: You have substantial means in your name. What would you do with those means in Congress?

Jack Schlossberg: I would put them into a blind trust that I was unable to trade.

David Remnick: Fair enough. You've been questioned about your stance on Israel, which is-- and called out for being a little inconsistent. I want you to set the record straight. There was a piece in Politico recently, you've criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and you said, I believe that you wouldn't send offensive weapons to Israel. There'd be no trading in that. You would support a continuation of Iron Dome as a defensive measure. You see a lot of tension in New York City in particular on this issue. How have you changed or not in your overall view of Israel?

Jack Schlossberg: I'm completely consistent no matter who I'm talking to about my views on this question. My stance on the US-Israel military relationship has changed as the situation has changed, just as it has changed for AOC and for Bernie. The Iran war marks a turning point. On the day the Iran war was initiated by President Trump, I said that I oppose the war. Opposing the war means all funding for that war, including sending offensive weapons to Israel, with whom we are jointly operating in Iran.

David Remnick: Iran under Donald Trump was the breaking point, not the behavior of the United States during Gaza when President Biden was in office.

Jack Schlossberg: I think this is a very complicated situation in the Middle East. There are many factors contributing to the violence and war-making that is going on there. When the US involvement in the region reached a fundamentally different threshold level, that is when I decided to say, "Stop sending bombs, stop sending offensive weapons to Israel."

David Remnick: That's what I'm asking. Was President Biden and Kamala Harris too easy on Netanyahu when they were in office?

Jack Schlossberg: I wouldn't go that far. I think that it's always easy to second-guess policy. I think President Biden was a strong supporter of Israel, and certainly more could have been done to protect lives in Gaza. I also believe that President Biden was able to get humanitarian aid into Gaza in a way President Trump refused to do, and that they did more to limit the loss of life there than President Trump has. Their record may not be perfect, but that's how I see it.

David Remnick: Do you think history will be kind to President Biden when it comes to Gaza?

Jack Schlossberg: I don't think that history will be kind to the US when it comes to Gaza, but I do think that, over time, the situation has changed. In the year following October 7th, I think there was a fundamentally different situation where Israel had been attacked, and they were justified in defending themselves. Now I think the situation is very different, where I don't think the US should continue supporting offensive weapons to Israel or their settlements in the West Bank, but that we should not abandon our ally, full stop, that Israel is our historic ally.

I hold out hope for a better future for the US and Israel. I also believe that we cannot afford to. For the same reason, I oppose sending more offensive weapons, I support funding for the Iron Dome. It protects civilians, including 600,000 Americans who live in Israel.

David Remnick: You've backed Mayor Mamdani, I think, any number of times, in earlier races as well.

Jack Schlossberg: Yes, I'm the only candidate who endorsed him before the mayoral primary.

David Remnick: He describes himself as a Democratic socialist, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has as well. Do you, or do you see yourself as a capitalist, or how would you describe your ideology?

Jack Schlossberg: I'm a Democrat, and I'm an American and a New Yorker. I don't subscribe to those labels.

David Remnick: They're meaningful. They're not just labels. They're descriptors that have meaning.

Jack Schlossberg: Again, I'm a Democrat. I'm not a socialist. I believe in capitalism.

David Remnick: Jack Schlossberg, thank you so much.

Jack Schlossberg: Thank you.

David Remnick: Jack Schlossberg is running for Congress, and the primary is on June 23rd.

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