The goal isn't health. It's distrust.
Disassembling institutions is the easiest way to create your own
How does a former president who says healthy eating entails “proper hamburgers” end up merging forces with a TRT-fueled “environmental champion” whose post-candidate platform is little more than simulated cosplay?
At first glance, RFK Jr latching onto Trump seems odd. But both men share a technique: sowing distrust in experts and institutions in order to accomplish their own agendas.
Just as MAGA has little to do with making America great, Bobby’s imitative slogan, MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), has nothing in common with actual health—especially public health. The goal is the opposite: to dismantle America’s public health system.
Which is why no policy solutions were offered during the four-hour congressional health and nutrition panel or the six-hour “Rescue the Republic” event in DC. Instead, we were bombarded with irate claims of a captured government—which in itself is not wrong. Lobbying is a big part of many of America’s problems. It’s just that people like Trump and Kennedy have no interest in solving that.
If Trump wins in November, Kennedy is potentially poised to lead the charge in dismantling the entire public health apparatus, an entirely plausible reality given his dangerous influence on vaccines:
As the [MAHA] movement grows in influence, the C.D.C. is recording a dip in vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles, the most contagious of the common childhood diseases. There have been 13 measles outbreaks so far in 2024, compared with four in 2023, endangering those with immune disorders and those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
Kennedy hasn’t abandoned his anti-vax stance. He’s just stretching in all directions. Chemtrails, for example. He’s recently stumbled into chronic diseases, providing as much evidence for his claims as he does about vaccines—none. Chronic disease experts are clueless as to where he’s getting his data, but that’s not stopping the man.
That’s the thing: he doesn’t have to provide reliable information. Another quality he shares with Trump: a fervent base that takes him at his word, regardless of how far from reality that word is.
That’s good enough for him, data be damned.
Deflection and whataboutism
Vani Hari, the “Food Babe,” is a perfect test case for MAHA.
Hari previously claimed that microwave ovens cause water molecules to form crystals that resemble negative thoughts, like when you say “Hitler” or “Satan” to a glass of agua; the flu shot is more dangerous than getting the flu; and that “there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever,” which means that drinking water or breathing oxygen is unacceptable.
Recently Hari’s been demonizing breakfast food ingredients. She held up Froot Loops at both MAHA events mentioned above, yelling about how the EU bans ingredients the US allows—a claim that Dr Andrea Love has shown to be false. (The chemicals are just titled differently overseas.)
That didn’t stop Eva Mendes from reposting the Food Babe’s claims to her 6.8M followers without any basic fact checking. Joe Rogan also repeated the claim verbatim, sans factchecks.
What I want to highlight, however, is how Hari responds to criticism, as it reflects an attitude pervading the entire MAHA crowd.
First, Love challenged Mendes:
Hari apparently scoured the post for dissent. Instead of addressing Love’s criticism, she first engages in whataboutism before turning to deflection. (Note: Love doesn’t write for GLP; they repost her content without pay.)
Factchecking isn’t in Hari’s repertoire. As with many wellness influencers, the very term, as expressed recently by Douglas Murray, is now treated as censorship. Recall JD Vance whining at debate moderators that they “promised not to factcheck.” This is indicative of the phenomenon of conspirituality we’ve tracked since 2020: the merging of wellness grifting and right-wing politics. Neither group likes to be held accountable for their words.
Hari, like Vance, and like Kennedy, isn’t interested in debating because her flawed arguments wouldn’t hold up. So she has to attack.
A broader point: ultra-processed foods should not make up the majority of anyone’s diet. Some people never eat UPFs, or even processed foods. If you have access to and can afford such a lifestyle, that’s wonderful. But not everyone can, and people like Hari exploit the self righteous who constantly confuse their anecdotes with other people’s health—and access to health.
The problem: Hari and Kennedy et al don’t offer actual solutions. They sell products or rely on fundraising. Hari’s demonizes food companies without addressing systemic problems with America’s food and healthcare systems, like access and affordability. She fudges data to raise her profile, drives traffic to her website, and sells a variety of processed foods in the form of protein powders and energy bars.
This is effectively Kennedy’s playbook as well. His new MAHA super pac has raised over $4M. This follows the over $58M raised as a presidential candidate. Meanwhile, his anti-vax nonprofit, which pays his salary, has really benefited from Covid fear-mongering:
Children's Health Defense (CHD), repeatedly called out for promoting vaccine falsehoods, collected about $46 million between 2020 and 2022, roughly 10 times its revenue in the three years preceding the pandemic… Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, received about $510,000 in compensation for serving as CHD's chairman in 2022 -- more than double his pre-pandemic salary, records show.
There’s nothing wrong with being compensated for your work. But when your work entails shitting on experts and institutions without providing credible data to back up your claims, then monetizing false promises in the form of individualized health solutions instead of doing the harder and less glamorous (and less profitable) work of public health is a problem.
Yet that’s exactly why MAHA leeching off MAGA isn’t a shock. It’s been Trump’s playbook all along.
Health at stake
Virologist and vaccine researcher Rick Bright headed up the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, during the Trump administration. He blew a whistle after watching the former president’s anti-science agenda up close. As he writes in a recent NY Times op-ed:
When I opposed the administration’s reckless promotion of the widespread use of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment I faced swift retaliation. I was removed from my position, silenced and sidelined at a time when experienced leadership was crucial. This wasn’t just a personal injustice; it was a microcosm of the administration’s broader war on scientific expertise.
This provides context for Bright’s bigger concern: Trump regaining the presidency. Here his warning about MAGA collides with the danger of MAHA.
Everything Kennedy and cohort advise is focused on individual health—not always in word, but always in sales or policy. He claims that he’ll end agency capture, yet Kennedy has already signaled a desire to dismantle those same agencies. This lines up with Bright’s fears:
Proposals supported by conservative initiatives like Project 2025 aim to split the C.D.C., stripping its ability to issue critical vaccine guidance, weaken the F.D.A.’s approval processes for key medical products and further slash N.I.H. funding. Some of these proposed changes, should Mr. Trump decide to embrace them, would require congressional approval. Yet a determined president could do a great deal of damage to our public health infrastructure through the installation of loyalists in key positions, redirection of funds and agency restructuring via executive actions.
Now imagine an emboldened Kennedy leading one of those agencies under Trump. Bobby has already threatened to blacklist researchers who have conducted research that resulted in FDA-approved pharmaceuticals. His two decades of anti-vax fear-mongering have resulted in deaths. His current platform states that he will “reorient federal health agencies,” aligning with Project 2025’s doublespeak (or, at times, blatant hopes of dismantling public health agencies).
Yet RFK has been telling on himself all this time. His nonprofit published an op-ed yesterday that tows the Heritage Foundation line, which is unsurprising given it was republished from the much smaller conservative think tank, the Brownstone Institute—an organization that unironically advocates for child labor and teenage smoking.
The author? Joel Salatin, a regenerative farmer whose star ascended thanks to Michael Pollan’s 2006 book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, before crashing back into the soil years later.
Kennedy claims he’s going to fix health from the inside of government. Yet Salatin writes the following on Children’s Health Defense:
Eliminate ALL government intervention in healthcare. Period. All licensing, all payments, all research. Everything.
and
Eliminate ALL government intervention in food, welfare and education. Yes, from SNAP to corn insurance. Get rid of all of it.
Kicking SNAP to the curb is an extremely Heritage idea. Kennedy has floated ending government-funded health research. How this would benefit American health is never entertained. Time and again, however, these ideas would only benefit those who can afford to be healthy.
Will Kennedy address this paradox of fixing health from inside a government he aims to dismantle? I’m not holding my breath.
Every facet of American health is at stake with this election.
The danger isn’t a few dyes in a box of shitty breakfast cereal. Beware of those who claim it is.