Kennedy Family, Sans RFK Jr., poses with Biden at the White House

Under normal circumstances, a visit to the White House by the Kennedy family on St. Patrick’s Day — a storied political family with Irish roots, led by a president of Irish descent — might not be particularly newsworthy.

But this year’s meeting had an undertone of family drama and political rejection.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is making an independent bid to replace President Biden, breaking with the Democratic Party and many members of his family, who have condemned his campaign as “dangerous.”

They have also emphatically supported Mr. Biden. On Sunday, Kerry Kennedy, one of Mr. Kennedy’s sisters, spoke posted a photo of the family at X in the White House with Mr. Biden. “President Biden, you are making the world a better place,” she wrote.

Mr Biden commented on the post: “From one proud Irish family to another – it was good to have you all back in the White House.”

Among the other Kennedy family members in attendance was Joseph P. Kennedy III, the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential candidate has brought him into conflict with his family, even as he repeatedly invokes their shared legacy and leans on Kennedy nostalgia during his campaign. Mr. Kennedy, 70, an environmental lawyer, rose to prominence during the pandemic as his longstanding skepticism about vaccines and embrace of political conspiracy theories came to the fore.

Mr. Kennedy had his own message for the Biden White House on St. Patrick’s Day: a complaint, shared in an email from his campaign Sunday morning, that his request for Secret Service protection had again been denied. The Secret Service protects the leading candidates for president, but it is up to the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with a congressional panel, to determine who qualifies.

Mr. Kennedy, the son of former Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a cousin of former President John F. Kennedy, also appeared Sunday on The Volpe Report, a public podcast in Pennsylvania, where he 60th anniversary from a speech his father gave in Scranton – Mr Biden’s hometown.