Robert F Kennedy Jr gets bitten as he grabs snakes from Dr Oz's patio

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gone viral after scooping up a pair of writhing snakes at Dr Mehmet Oz’s beach house in Florida.

On Tuesday (26 May), the 72-year-old shared a video via social media of himself capturing two slithering black racers with his bare hands.

The 49-second clip was captioned: “Cheryl cheerleads the removal of a pair of Black Racers from Dr Oz's patio,” with RFK Jr. presumably referring to his wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm actress, Cheryl Hines.

At one point, the reptiles appeared to bite the environmental lawyer, who showed no signs of distress.

Southern black racers, common to the Southeastern United States, are known for their speed and agility, preferring to flee danger rather than fight.

According to the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, the snake is likely to strike repeatedly when cornered but are usually considered ‘harmless’ to human beings.

Earlier this year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reminded residents to stay away from snakes, advising them to give the animals ‘a wide berth and admire from a distance’.

"Resist the urge to pick it up - even our nonvenomous snakes can give a solid bite,” the Commission advised.

Kennedy’s viral moment comes just months after he received backlash for sharing an AI-generated video promoting the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement.

In February, the father of six shared a video of a fake ‘Kennedy Action Figure’, which increased his strength to battle against a ‘chronic disease’ monster, AKA petroleum-derived synthetic dye Red 40, by drinking ‘real milk’.

“My message is clear: eat real food,” the AI video said, showing the fabled toy flipping a pyramid upside down.

The latter was making reference to the recently reintroduced American food pyramid, which was ushed in back in January with new US food guidelines.

The inverted tetrahedron, which emphasised protein sources such as red meat and full-fat dairy products, replaced the USDA’s MyPlate initiative, previously championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama in 2011.

Experts have slammed RFK Jr.’s food pyramid, with one writing that it was an outdated ‘symbol and way of thinking about visual communication’.

Writing Stat News, Debbie Millman, chair of the masters in branding program at the School of Visual Arts, said that it offered ‘little guidance about quantity, balance’ or how ts dietary recommendations should translate into meals.

“Millman also claimed that so many illustrated food examples manages to ‘muddy the message’, suggesting that the ‘Eat Real Food’ slogan is up for interpretation.

“’Eat Real Food,’ is neither defined nor portrayed by any real food. The design leaves viewers to project their own assumptions onto the notion of ‘real’,” she added.

RFK Jr. hit headlines again in February when he appeared to make a major U-turn on 'toxic' pesticides, including glyphosate, by supporting US President Donald Trump’s Executive Order to ‘bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end [the country’s] near-total reliance on adversarial nations’.

Despite previously winning a landmark case against chemical giant Monsanto, arguing its Roundup weedkiller contributed to his client’s cancer, the Republican claimed that the United States agricultural system would ‘collapse’ without the chemical.

“The U.S. represents 4 percent of the world’s population, yet we use roughly 25 percent of its pesticides,” he said.

“If these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today. The consequences would be disastrous.”

Days later, RFK Jr. appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he said he was not ‘particularly’ happy with Trump’s Executive Order.

“[Glyphosate] is not a good thing to have in your food so … it’s not something that I was particularly happy with. Let me put it that way, mildly,” he told Rogan.

“But I also understand the president’s point of view,” he added. “If you ban glyphosate overnight, or if you got rid of it … it would destroy the American food system.”