Rarely do Senators stop to address Americans. But that’s just what one man did.
Now this GOP Senator took to the Senate floor to warn Americans about a shocking threat.
Shrimp from the Twilight Zone: Kennedy’s Senate Sci-Fi Extravaganza
Last week, Louisiana’s firebrand Senator John Kennedy, a 73-year-old Republican with a flair for the dramatic, transformed the U.S. Senate floor into a scene straight out of a sci-fi thriller.
Brandishing a massive poster of the slimy, tapeworm-like chestburster from the 1979 film Alien, Kennedy spun a wild yarn about radioactive shrimp invading American supermarkets, warning they could “k*ll you” or, at minimum, “guarantee you will grow an extra ear.”
His theatrical tirade, sparked by FDA recalls of shrimp tainted with the radioactive isotope cesium-137 from stores like Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons in late August 2025, left his staffer struggling to keep a straight face.
The speech, reposted on Kennedy’s X account, exploded to 1.5 million views, splitting viewers between those hailing his gusto and others slamming it as “fear-mongering” to sidestep weightier national debates. The FDA’s recall notices, issued on August 15 and August 28, identified frozen shrimp from Ecuador and Vietnam as carrying low levels of cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear activity, posing a long-term cancer risk but hardly the stuff of extraterrestrial nightmares.
Gulf Glory or Grandstanding? Kennedy’s Shrimp Crusade
Kennedy’s speech wasn’t just about health scares—it was a love letter to Louisiana’s shrimp industry, one of the largest in the U.S., rivaled only by Texas. He railed against foreign shrimp, claiming without evidence that other countries “shoot the shrimp full of antibiotics,” turning consumers into bacteria-resistant mutants over time.
“I believe in homegrown Louisiana shrimp, fresh out of the Gulf, not radioactive,” he declared, admitting his bias as a proud advocate for his state’s $1.3 billion seafood industry, which employs over 15,000 workers and accounts for 30% of U.S. shrimp production.
“Some stores buy foreign shrimp because it’s cheaper. Now we know why: The d*mn stuff is radioactive!” Kennedy’s push to prioritize domestic shrimp dovetails with his long-standing efforts to protect Louisiana’s economy, like his 2023 campaign to block imports of Chinese crawfish, which he claimed undercut local markets.
Critics argue this latest stunt is less about safety and more about boosting Gulf Coast profits while painting foreign producers as reckless, a narrative that conveniently ignores the U.S.’s own history of seafood contamination, like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill that tainted Gulf shrimp with oil residues.
Kennedy’s Colorful Canon: A Legacy of Zesty Zingers
The radioactive shrimp saga is peak Kennedy, a senator since 2017 known for his folksy, often outlandish takes on national issues. In July, after a tragic shooting at the NFL headquarters in Manhattan that k*lled three and injured 12, Kennedy sidestepped calls for gun control, quipping that America needed “idiot control” instead, before conceding he didn’t know “exactly how to do that.”
In 2019, during the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, he advised Democrats fuming over Trump’s border policies to “pop a Zoloft,” a cheeky reference to the anxiety medication that drew chuckles and eye-rolls alike. In 2022, he made waves by comparing the Inflation Reduction Act to “a warm glass of milk with a fly in it,” a jab that landed him on late-night talk shows.
Kennedy’s shrimp spectacle also echoes his 2021 warning about “invasive lionfish” in the Gulf, where he urged fishermen to “eat ’em before they eat us,” blending humor with economic advocacy.
His knack for vivid metaphors and Southern charm has made him a social media darling, with X posts regularly topping millions of views, though detractors argue his theatrics distract from substantive policy solutions, like addressing the root causes of food safety lapses or gun violence.
