These 7 Famous Families Got Into Big Fights Over Politics

During the Super Bowl on Sunday, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took part in two great American political traditions: Campaign ads and family feuds.

The latest Kennedy drama played out via a pricey $7 million campaign ad brought to you by the American Values super PAC on behalf of Kennedy, who’s now running as an independent after an initial flirtation with the Democratic nomination.

The ad, all 30 seconds of it, took us straight back to Camelot, with a retro campaign spot nearly identical to the one that his uncle, John F. Kennedy, used when he ran for president in 1960 — from grainy photos of the Kennedys to the campaign jingle.

It didn’t sit well with the other members of the Kennedy clan.

Bobby Shriver, Kennedy’s cousin, wrote on X: “My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces- and my Mother’s.” His mom, he declared, would have been “appalled.”

Kennedy immediately apologized for the ad, writing on X that he “was sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” but he still pinned the ad to the top of his profile, unpinning it only after multiple outlets and other commentators pointed it out.

Kennedy isn’t the first to come to blows with his family over politics. Hot-button political issues have turned even the happiest families sour. These seven offer an invaluable lesson for Kennedy and anyone else seeking the White House: When it comes to politics, you can’t trust anyone — not even (especially?) your own family.

Franklin v. Franklin

Political family feuds in America go back to the Founders themselves — and one of them tore apart a father and son. Benjamin Franklin’s son William followed in his father’s footsteps for decades, learning the printing trade before becoming the royal governor of New Jersey in 1762. A young William even helped his father with the famous kite experiment. But as the American Revolution heated up, relations between father and son grew chilly. The junior Franklin was a Loyalist; the senior Franklin’s loyalties lay elsewhere. In 1775, Benjamin tried to persuade William to take up a position in the Continental Army forming under George Washington. William refused, telling his father that if he were aiming to set the colonies on fire, “he would take care to run away by the light of it.” Things boiled over when, as royal governor of New Jersey, William got caught informing the British of revolutionary activities and wound up in solitary confinement. In 1777, the colonists released him and he later fled in exile to England, where he lived the remainder of his life. The two never reconciled, but they wrote each other tearful letters. In 1790, just a few years before his death, Benjamin wrote to William: “Nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen Sensations as to find myself deserted in my old Age by my only Son.”

Roosevelt v. Roosevelt

The two most famous members of the Roosevelt family — former Presidents Teddy and Franklin — were on different sides of the political spectrum. (FDR was a Democrat while Teddy was a Republican who later ran as a third-party candidate with the Progressive Party, nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party".) But for the most part, politics didn’t play a role in their dynamic. The same can’t be said for some of their relatives, however. Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest daughter, Alice, a stalwart conservative her entire life, saw FDR as a lifelong “Nemesis” who displaced the next rightful Roosevelt president, her older half-brother Theodore Jr. She told Newsweek in 1936 that, “When I think of Frank and Eleanor in the White House, I could grind my teeth to powder and blow them out my nose.” Alice treated Eleanor, whom sheregarded as a sanctimonious do-gooder, with particular disdain. She’d impersonate Eleanor by “tucking her chin, sticking out her teeth, and braying.”

Trump v. Trump

The feuds in the Trump family go so deep that one member even wrote a whole book about their family dysfunction. For years, Mary Trump, a psychologist, has been speaking out against her relatives and describing the family dynamics that formed the former president, her Uncle Donald. Her book came out in 2020, but she was also a source for investigations into Donald’s finances earlier, during his presidency. “I used to feel compassion for him,” Mary wrote, but “that became impossible.” Mary Trump even has a Substack newsletter dedicated to dishing about her uncle’s shenanigans. Trump was quick to fire back, calling Mary a “mess” and a “seldom seen niece.” His parents, he said, “couldn’t stand her!”

Cheney v. Cheney

During Liz Cheney’s run for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming in the 2014 election cycle, she came out in opposition to gay marriage, even though her sister Mary Cheney had recently married her wife, Heather Poe. The sisters stopped speaking and their father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, took Liz’s side. Liz’s Senate bid ultimately failed, but she was able to mend her relationship with her sister, issuing this mea culpa in 2021 on 60 Minutes: “I was wrong,” she said. “I love my sister very much.”

Romney v. Romney

U.S. senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is one of the few Republicans who has consistently spoken out against the Trumpification of the GOP. While that’s certainly come at a cost to his political career, it’s also impacted his relationship with his niece, Ronna McDaniel, the soon-to-be erstwhile chair of the Republican Party. McDaniel went by the last name Romney McDaniel for decades, drawing on her famous family name to move up the ranks of Michigan politics, eventually becoming chair of the state Republican Party. But after Trump tapped her to head the Republican National Committee in 2016, he ordered her to stop using the Romney name. She bent the knee quickly, dropping “Romney” from official party communications and started attacking Mitt, accusing him of “feeding into what the Democrats and the media want.” As Karen Tumulty wrote in the Washington Post, the conflict had become “The War of the Romneys.” 

Gosar v. Gosar

Since running for reelection in 2018 family members of Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar have been bashing him in television ads, declaring to voters that he’s unfit for office. In one of the 2018 ads titled “A Family Defends Its Honor” one of Gosar’s brothers declares ominously, “It’s intervention time.” Paul Gosar’s mom even got involved, defending him from the family barbs. After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which Gosar defended, his siblings went on the attack again. “I consider him a traitor to the family,” Dave Gosar said. The lawmaker was ready and willing to fight back. “‘To the six angry Democrat Gosars — see you at Mom and Dad’s house!’” he told CNN.

Kennedy v. Kennedy

Members of the Kennedy clan have repeatedly voiced their displeasure with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His brother Joseph Kennedy II declared alongside other family members during the Covid-19 pandemic that Kennedy was “tragically wrong” on vaccines. Later, other members of the staunchly Democratic Kennedy family took things a step further, signing a joint statementarguing that his candidacy would be “perilous for our country.” Tensions cooled a bit after Kennedy decided to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat. But the family still launched a full-court effort to encourage him to drop out entirely — complete with confrontations at family events in Hyannis Port and Cape Cod.

At least there’s some good news for Kennedy: The family matriarch, Ethel Kennedy, refuses to criticize her son.