The most shocking news story of the year won’t be identified as such on any major news network.

It wasn’t the blockbuster announcement of drug and pedophilia allegations around music mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs; you expect such things from the rap crowd.

It wasn’t the announcement that the powerful longshoremen’s union, run by Harold “I Will Cripple You!” Daggett decided to postpone their multi-coastal port strike -- after just three days -- until after the election; you expect union bosses and Democrat politicians to do favors for each other, they’ve been partners in crime for a century.

No. The most shocking news story of the year was that Pretender-in-Chief Joe Biden gave one of the eulogies at the public memorial service of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington D.C.

To those who follow the Kennedy clan, this shouldn’t have been a shock.  The Kennedy family has been Democrat party royalty for more than 70 years now. As a family that produced ambassadors, a president, and a few senators, and congressmembers, it makes sense that its matriarch’s funeral would attract the shining lights of the party.

But there’s a problem this year. 

Ethel Skakel Kennedy and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had eleven children, one of whom – the second oldest male, named for his father, has himself been in the news quite a bit this year.

Her son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ran for president in 2024.

First, he attempted to run in the Democrat primaries, in keeping with the family’s long tradition of staying with the party no matter what. But the party didn’t take kindly to RFK Jr.’s audacity in challenging their doddering incumbent, so he was forced to switch to an independent campaign.

Challenging Joe Biden made him persona non grata to the official Democrat party hierarchy, despite his lifetime of loyalty and service.

RFK Jr. ultimately raised at least $60 million in his campaign committee and inspiring another $60 million in supportive political action committees, eventually becoming the major independent candidate in the 2024 cycle.

When we consider the fact that this candidate has seen both his father and his uncle assassinated during their own presidential campaigns, it isn’t difficult to see how the RFK Jr. campaign would take this personally.  The memory of those two assassinations, when he was a child, are indelibly branded on his memory.  How could his own party’s incumbent leader withholding protection from him, of all people, be interpreted as anything but a particularly nasty personal affront (carried out by a mechanism of what should be an impartial, nonpartisan government agency)?

When RFK Jr. suspended his campaign and began the process of surgically deciding in which states he would remain on the ballot, and in which states he would be removed, both he and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, made it clear that the vindictive, tyrannical behavior of the Biden White House was a major driver in their choices, both to drop out and to do whatever they could to help the Trump ticket win.

This ticket began as a well-intentioned, ideological effort, dedicated to represent the issues of what they believed to be an underserved portion of the electorate – and then the malice of Joe Biden, and the bureaucracy he controls, drove them to make their ticket become as much of an intentional spoiler as possible.

Of all the politicians to speak at his own mother’s memorial service, it is simply outrageous that Joe Biden was selected.  They had two other past Democrat presidents to eulogize her; both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  There was no need to invite the lame duck to come out from his basement and take a position of honor at the funeral of one of the matriarchs of the party he had defiled.

Perhaps, Gentle Reader, it’s just my Italian blood (25%) rising to the surface.  If a president or party leader had put the government’s thumb on the scale against a member of my family in such a manner, there is no way on earth my family would allow the old hack inside the church, let alone hand him a microphone and invite him to speak.

But then, I’m part Irish, too, and I’m sure my Irish side wouldn’t reward such a personal villain either.  So, I continue to be shocked.

After the way the Biden regime treated Mrs. Kennedy’s second oldest boy over the past year, Biden’s nerve in showing up at all, let alone delivering a eulogy as if a respected family friend, serves as just another example of the inhuman, insensitive, nonsensical thought processes of the modern American Left.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker.  Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his nonfiction book on the 2024 election, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

Image: Screen shot from ABC News video, via YouTube