The story comes as Kennedy’s standing in the polls has dropped in recent weeks.

By Jessica Piper

08/04/2024 06:42 PM EDT

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he dumped a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park a decade ago, in a video he released on social media Sunday afternoon.

In the video, Kennedy tells actress Roseanne Barr that he did not kill the bear, but put it in his car with plans to skin it after it was killed by another driver. He also suggests he is telling the story to get ahead of a pending story in the New Yorker, which inquired about the incident.

The story lines up with an incident that occurred nearly a decade ago: The New York Times reported in October 2014 a dead bear was found in Central Park near an abandoned bicycle. But the circumstances of the bear’s death, or how it got to New York City, were never publicly revealed.

Kennedy said he picked up the bear while on a falconing expedition in the Hudson Valley, planning to bring it home, but the day ran long and he went straight to a dinner at Peter Luger Steak House in New York City. He then had plans to go to the airport, but did not want to leave the dead bear in his car, so he planted it in the park with an old bicycle, saying he thought it would fit a narrative about a series of bike accidents in the city.

He said he was nervous that the bear would be linked to him after the news was on “every television station.”

“Luckily the story died after a while, and it stayed dead for a decade, and the New Yorker somehow found out about it,” Kennedy said.

It is the latest strange story to emerge about Kennedy, who has seen his standing in the polls falter since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. Reports emerged earlier this year that Kennedy claimed during a deposition as part of divorce proceedings more than a decade ago that a worm had eaten part of his brain and then died.