Trump, RFK vow to ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ raising hopes and doubts

Staring into a camera last month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he'd deepened his partnership with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. He gestured to his green "Make America Healthy Again" hat, a new and visible melding of his environmental politics and Trump's conservative brand.

"We're going to become, once again, the healthiest nation on Earth," Kennedy vowed in the video. "That's what we mean by MAHA."

Nothing symbolizes the unusual alliance between the two men more than their shared Make America Healthy Again agenda, with the former Democrat partnering with Republicans' leader on a platform that calls for overhauling federal regulations on food and pharmaceuticals, retooling farm subsidies, and cleaning house at the nation's public health agencies.

Their still-developing plan taps into broad frustrations with America's health-care system and problems — such as the nation's reliance on ultra-processed food , the surge of chronic disease and declining U.S. life expectancy — that Democrats scarcely discuss and that Trump had previously ignored, too.

In interviews, food and medical experts said they were pleased that overlooked public health priorities had suddenly been injected into the presidential campaign, but several said they were still processing that the message is coming from Kennedy and Trump.

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End of carousel Both men are known for stances that experts caution would make Americans less healthy, including Kennedy's warnings against vaccines and Trump's efforts to repeal health insurance programs that millions of Americans depend on for coverage.

The strength of the MAHA movement "shows how all Americans of any political stripe see that we're really, really sick — and that our food is the primary cause," said Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

Several former Trump aides expressed skepticism that he would follow through on the Kennedy-led MAHA agenda, pointing to Trump's spotty track record of delivering on sweeping campaign promises.

The two men are unlikely avatars of a campaign to restore America's health.

The 70-year-old Kennedy has said he was addicted to heroin and other substances in his youth, suffers from a condition called spasmodic dysphonia that has left him with a raspy voice, and has said that a parasitic worm ate part of his brain. The 78-year-old Trump has decried the idea of gym workouts, is known to love fast food and has balked at releasing his full medical records.

But Kennedy built much of his suspended presidential campaign around voters' backlash against the nation's public health establishment, winning a mix of left-wing and independent supporters he is now seeking to redirect to Trump.

In exchange, Kennedy has said, Trump promised him a substantial role in shaping personnel and policy in a potential Trump administration, vowing to let him remake agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — unnerving federal officials who say that Kennedy should be allowed nowhere near the nation's public health infrastructure because of his anti-vaccine views .

Some Kennedy allies have already been added to a Trump transition team shortlist of potential appointees at food and health agencies, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss transition plans. That list includes Casey Means, a Stanford University-trained physician and chronic-disease entrepreneur being considered to run the Food and Drug Administration. Others, such as Johns Hopkins University physician Marty A. Makary, who worked with the Trump administration on health-care price transparency and other policy issues, are also being considered to run the FDA, the people with knowledge of the plans said.

Means did not respond to requests for comment about her potential role in a Trump administration. Makary said he was not aware of any discussions about his potential role.

The Trump campaign declined to comment on potential appointees, calling it "premature." Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman, wrote in an email that Trump would "establish a special Presidential Commission of independent minds who are not bought and paid for by Big Pharma and will charge them with investigating what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic illnesses."

Kennedy and Trump are set to make a joint appearance next week touting their shared health agenda in a virtual town hall. Their political teams have spent the past month urging supporters to visit MAHAnow.org, a version of Kennedy's former campaign website now topped with a banner: ""

The Harris campaign did not respond to questions about the MAHA campaign but has mocked Kennedy and Trump's partnership on social media and cited Kennedy's anti-vaccine rhetoric.

"RFK Jr. can't be trusted to choose personnel for the FDA, NIH and CDC when he's already promised to dismantle these offices and stack them with like-minded fringe conspiracy theorists," Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, wrote in an email.

Kennedy's spokeswoman Stefanie Spear told The Washington Post that he has "never been anti-vaccine" and is "pro-science," despite his long history of misleading claims about vaccine safety and his leadership of one of the country's most prominent anti-vaccine groups.

While Trump oversaw Operation Warp Speed — a program to expedite the production of coronavirus vaccines — he also has falsely linked childhood vaccinations to autism in the past and considered Kennedy to lead a vaccine safety commission in 2017. In a July phone call with Kennedy , Trump suggested that "something's wrong with that whole system" while discussing vaccines, according to a video posted online by Kennedy's son Bobby Kennedy III.

The convergence of the far right and far left on the messaging about food has befuddled some longtime nutrition experts and advocates. They also note that Trump's MAHA message now is at odds with the corporate-friendly approach he pursued in his first term.

Marion Nestle, retired professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, described being stunned when she first heard the new Kennedy-Trump messaging because it paralleled "what I've been saying for decades: that the American diet is not healthy, that people are getting sick as a result — [and] the government isn't doing anything about it," she said.

But Nestle doesn't believe "for one millisecond" that Trump's ambitious goals would be achieved, arguing he had previously tried to implement policies, such as seeking to limit eligibility for food stamps , that she said would have harmed public health.

"I have no reason to think that any of that will happen because it didn't happen when he was president," Nestle said. "He made things worse."

Kennedy himself criticized the Trump administration at the time for rolling back public health and environmental protections, calling some of Trump's actions " despicable " and celebrating his defeats in court on environmental issues.

"President Trump and I had a long series of discussions about this," Kennedy told Fox News last month, saying that Trump blamed his White House decisions on bad advice from lobbyists and corporations. "He said, 'I'm going to do something different this time.'"

From rivals to partners Kennedy initially positioned himself last year as the only Democrat who could beat Trump, arguing he could siphon away his voters while providing an alternative to President Joe Biden — but by August had suspended his long-shot bid for the White House amid declining poll numbers and increasing campaign financial trouble.

Standing next to Trump at a Phoenix-area rally, Kennedy spoke of how he came to endorse an opponent who had once called him "the most radical left candidate." Kennedy said he received a call from Calley Means, brother of Casey Means and a fellow wellness entrepreneur, shortly after the July assassination attempt against Trump, asking if Kennedy would be willing to speak to the former president.

"We talked not about the things that separate us, because we don't agree on everything, but on the values and the issues that bind us together," Kennedy said. "And one of the issues that he talked about was having safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic."

Two weeks later, Kennedy laid out the anti-corporate Make America Healthy Again agenda in a Wall Street Journal op-ed . The list of a dozen proposals — some of which are vague or would require congressional approval — include preventing food stamps from being used to buy soda or processed foods; limiting the fees the FDA gets from pharmaceutical companies; and devoting half of the National Institutes of Health's research budget to "preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health."

Trump's and Kennedy's allies have endorsed the abrupt partnership, with Trump's former public health deputies now cheering an anti-vaccine activist. "I support their noble effort to heal our children," Robert Redfield, Trump's CDC director, wrote in a Newsweek op-ed last month, calling Kennedy "the right man for the job."

Calley Means said Kennedy's plan to fight chronic disease had common ground with Trump's pledge to "Make America Great Again" by attacking special interests.

"More than any candidate in modern American history, President Trump has stood for taking on broken incentives and corruption that's holding back the American people," Calley Means said in an interview.

Trump surrogates have amped up their messages as the election approaches. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican who promotes Trump's health agenda, said SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — should go toward fresh food, not ultra-processed items, under a new presidential administration.

"Taxpayers don't need to be paying for junk food," said Miller, who said he is being considered to lead the U.S. Agriculture Department under Trump. "I don't see saving taxpayers money as a partisan issue."

Independent experts concede: The Trump-Kennedy team has a point.

Ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the calories Americans consume daily. Several studies have shown these industrially produced and hyper-palatable foods to be risk factors for chronic diseases shortening life spans. Few lawmakers have chosen to pick a fight with the food industry, although Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — chairman of the Senate's health committee — has proposed slapping a warning label on ultra-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages.

"The increasing rates of obesity and chronic disease" are a major public health problem, said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization that warns about the drawbacks of ultra-processed food and food dye and insufficient regulation of food processing.

Lurie, a former top FDA official in the Obama administration, notes that his five-decade-old organization has called for policies such as limiting food additives and boosting chemical safety — just as Trump and Kennedy are doing now. "We're glad for anybody who sees the problems and the solutions the way we do," he said.

Tackling ultra-processed foods is complex, some nutrition experts and federal officials said. While more studies are underway, the FDA has initiatives to crack down on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars and review chemicals found in food.

Gabriel Benavidez, a Baylor University epidemiologist who recently wrote a study about chronic disease in a CDC journal, said he found himself agreeing with Kennedy's points in his Wall Street Journal op-ed laying out the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

"The common thread in all of RFK's proposals seems to be a desire to remove business interests from our medical research, health-care system, and food production," Benavidez wrote in an email. "You would be hard-pressed to find a public health or health-care professional in the country who disagrees with that sentiment."

Several former Trump health officials said many of the coalition's ideas don't hold up to scrutiny or could be abandoned by Trump, who has been much less specific than Kennedy about what he would do.

One former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationship with the former president, pointed to Trump's 2019 pledge to crack down on vaping — which was partially abandoned amid a political backlash. "Just because Redfield is talking about it and Robert Kennedy's talking about it, that doesn't really mean anything until the is talking about it," the former Trump health official said.

Crafting a message The campaign has quickly taken shape in public, fueled in part by Casey and Calley Means's appearances on shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) last month hosted a Capitol Hill forum where Calley and Casey Means, Makary and others spoke about the need to tackle chronic disease.

Some voters said they found the message appealing. Mitch Dryer, a former New York firefighter who moved to Colorado, had been planning to vote for Kennedy; he even bought a yard sign earlier this year that he's kept up. Dryer, who discovered Kennedy when he appeared on Rogan's podcast, said he agreed with Kennedy's complaints about America's unhealthy foods, chemicals and other public health problems.

"Every damn commercial on TV is for pharmaceuticals ... and not one of these pills cures any problem anybody has," Dryer said, adding he plans to vote for Trump, in part because of the new Make America Healthy Again alliance. "If Trump wins, it sounds like [Kennedy] would have a larger role in the administration, which I'd be all for."

Biden officials say they're watching closely — and nervously.

"Part of me is excited about the fact that we're having a national conversation about chronic disease," added a federal health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. "Whether this is an authentic movement that is going to be science-based, or is this going to be similar to some of the previous 'public health campaigns' rooted in misinformation, I really worry about that aspect."

Scientists, nutritionists and other experts are also worried that the MAHA movement goes too far in demonizing public health agencies. Kennedy has blamed the explosion of chronic disease on pervasive corruption within federal agencies "captured by the industries they're supposed to regulate," which he has said all have an interest in "mass poisoning" the American public.

Some of Trump and Kennedy's campaign promises may encounter political realities. For instance, Kennedy wants to limit the fees that drug companies pay to the FDA when seeking drug approvals, arguing they prevent the agency from being independent.

But a former Trump FDA official predicted the proposal would run aground in Washington, given that the FDA would still need billions of dollars to operate and the White House would have to ask Congress to make up the difference.

The plan "involves kicking out industry dollars and instead replacing them with appropriated dollars, which basically means taking up to 31⁄2 billion dollars from taxpayers and giving them to pharma," said the former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity given regulatory entanglements. "I don't think that happens."

MAHA supporters insist that only an unorthodox agenda can disrupt America's slide into unhealthy behaviors — and call for a focus on the message, not the messengers.

"While some people believe that no good ideas can come from their political opponent, I feel that we should all be united in fighting corruption in government by special interests," Makary wrote in an email. "We need a renewed focus on what's causing chronic diseases, not just how to medicate them."