Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, who was then three years into his first term as a US Senator, and just 80 days into his candidacy for president of the United States. Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s Hardball, has written about RFK’s brother in the books “Jack Kennedy—Elusive Hero” and “Kennedy and Nixon,” and now has published “Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit.” In our conversation about the book, the topics we covered included:
- What made him want to return to tell more stories about the Kennedy family;
- How Bobby was different from Jack and Ted;
- What was his role in his brother’s administration;
- If he’d lived, would RFK have been the Democratic presidential nominee in ’68;
- Would he then have gone on the beat Nixon, and how that would have changed US history;
- Whether Chris, a grad student at UNC in 1968, was an RFK-For-President supporter;
- How Bobby Kennedy tangled with the Mafia and Jimmy Hoffa, and whether that affected his support from unions;
- A touching story about the crowds that gathered to see his funeral train.
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