Chris Pratt professes ignorance to what RFK Jr.'s doing, but hopes he's successful

"I love him," Pratt says of RFK Jr., but adds "I don’t know what to believe" about his policies.

By Mary Kate Carr | August 19, 2025 | 9:53am

Screenshots: The Tonight Show; Scripps News (YouTube)

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Chris Pratt professes ignorance to what RFK Jr.'s doing, but hopes he's successful

Unfortunately, there’s no way for Chris Pratt to know what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting up to in the government. Because Kennedy (the cousin of Pratt’s mother-in-law) has jumped “on the bandwagon with who is the most divisive president ever”—a polite way to describe Donald Trump—it makes sense to the actor that Kennedy is “made to look terrible,” Pratt says during an appearance on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast. “And so I don’t know what to believe.”

If only there was some way to make an informed judgement about Kennedy’s policies. If other people are making RFK Jr. look terrible, how else is Pratt supposed to determine the truth? He can’t just ask the man himself, despite the fact that he’s “spent a number of occasions hanging with him, just in a strictly family dinner kind of vibe,” Pratt says. “It’s not like I say to Bobby, ‘Let’s talk about this’ while we’re playing cards or having fun or having dinner. I’m not going to pick his brain to find out exactly which of those things are true. I just kind of assume that none of them are, and, for the most part, I wish him well.”

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If Pratt can’t ask Bobby himself, but he also can’t trust anyone else’s word on the subject, then there’s simply no way of knowing what’s going on in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But please don’t imagine Pratt lives in complete ignorance, because he does have some vague idea of Kennedy’s beliefs. “There’s certain things [that RFK Jr.] oversees that seem to be supported in a bipartisan way—like getting terrible toxic stuff out of our kids’ food. I think that’s a great thing. If you just do that, that’s amazing,” Pratt says. Unfortunately, Kennedy is not just doing that, but Pratt wouldn’t know about it given he apparently doesn’t believe stuff like news outlets or words directly from Kennedy’s mouth.

“I’d hate to be so mired in hatred for the president that any success from his administration is something I’d be having an allergic reaction to. To be like, ‘Oh, well, if they do it, I don’t want it to happen. I’ll put Clorox in my children’s cereal myself!’ Be reasonable here,” Pratt complains. (Imagine being scolded on what’s reasonable by a guy who, in his own words, doesn’t know what he’s talking about.) The Parks And Rec alum observes that “There’s certain things that would be a good thing to have,” which is true. It would be good to have mRNA vaccines, which helped end the pandemic, but Kennedy canceled $500 million in contracts for vaccine development; it would be good to have a division of the CDC monitoring lead exposure levels among children and managing prevention across the country, but that’s one of the many important programs Kennedy cut; it would be good to have no dead bears dumped in Central Park trash cans, but, well, you know how that one ends.

Pratt says he “got along really well” with RFK Jr. during cozy family gatherings. “He’s funny, he’s wonderful. I love him,” Pratt adds. Of the entire Trump administration, he declared, “I want them all to be successful.” What Trump, RFK Jr., and the whole gang consider “successful” might end up being disastrous for the country, but again, there’s no way for Chris Pratt to figure that out.