Tag Archive for: rfk

‘People Will Be Outraged’: MAHA Advocates Tell Senators To Think Twice Before Opposing RFK Jr.’s Nomination

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Supporters of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda have a message for senators who may be entertaining the idea of tanking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination: opposition won’t go unnoticed among the American public.

Though Kennedy’s nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary is drawing fierce resistance from the medical establishment and corporate media, the former independent presidential candidate has a legion of supporters willing to go to the mat to secure his confirmation. MAHA advocates believe that Kennedy is uniquely positioned to help the president-elect usher in a “golden age in health” during the next four years.

MAHA advocates are also prepared to scrutinize senators who oppose Kennedy for any ties to Big Pharma and other corporate interests, according to interviews conducted by the Daily Caller News Foundation with several prominent Kennedy supporters.

“It would be outrageous for Republican or Democratic senators to vote no against RFK Jr.,” Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of the medical freedom and health advocacy nonprofit, Moms Across America, told the DCNF in an interview. “It would be a huge step back in the wrong direction and people will be outraged.”

“It will be a clear sign that those senators [who vote no] are putting the special interests of Big Pharma before the health of the American people,” Honeycutt added. “What Kennedy is asking for is to have safer food and vaccines. How can you be against that?”

Heading Into January With Notable GOP Allies

Kennedy met with more than a dozen GOP senators on Capitol Hill in December during which the life-long Democrat appeared to win the support of several social conservatives, including Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, by committing to uphold pro-life Health and Human Services (HHS) policies that Trump pushed during his first term.

Senate Republicans also appear to be embracing many of the food and health policy issues raised by MAHA advocates as a considerable number of the GOP conference rallies behind Kennedy’s nomination.

On Dec. 19, Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall announced the creation of the Senate MAHA Caucus, which promises to “work with RFK Jr. to be the legislative force that ensures the key pillars of MAHA are executed.”

Republican Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Rick Scott of Florida, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming are founding members of the Senate MAHA caucus.

No GOP senator has yet to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, but Republicans seen as more willing to cross Trump, including Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are noncommittal.

‘Trying Desperately To Derail’ Kennedy

Long experiencing contempt from corporate media over their advocacy, MAHA advocates are tuning out outlets’ coverage of Kennedy’s nomination and hoping that senators are as well.

“They have not been reporting accurately on vaccine safety or on the pesticides in our food. They’ve been putting their ad dollars — from Big Pharma to Big Ag — before the health and safety of Americans,” Honeycutt told the DCNF. “We see through that. Mainstream media does not tell us hardly anything that is truthful.”

McConnell issued a veiled threat to Kennedy to distance himself from efforts to probe the safety of vaccines following the release of a misleading New York Times exposé on Dec. 13 alleging that Aaron Siri, one of Kennedy’s lawyers, asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an independent agency under the HHS, to “revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.”

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell, a polio survivor, said in a statement on Dec. 14.

But the New York Times’ story was “categorically false,” according to Siri, because his petition only sought to have the FDA conduct another clinical trial of one of the six polio vaccines licensed in the United States to ensure its safety when administered to children, Siri told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson during an interview in December.

“Even if this petition was granted, there is not a single child or adult in America that would not have had access to a polio vaccine,” Siri told Carlson. “That is what makes the New York Times headlines absolutely false. They knew it was false. They intended for the country to be deceived because they’re trying desperately to derail Mr. Kennedy’s nomination.”

MAHA advocates believe that Kennedy’s prior statements advocating for subjecting vaccines to further scientific study is a position most Americans would support.

“Bobby Kennedy has said one thing consistently, which is pharmaceutical products should be subjected to science,” Calley Means, a prominent MAHA advocate and co-author of the best-selling book, Good Energy, told the DCNF. “The president’s directive is to figure out why kids are getting sick, why kids are getting autism. And that includes resetting research to answering that question.”

“I don’t think any American disagrees with the idea that pharmaceutical products should be continually studied,” Means added.

‘There Will Be A Huge Backlash’

Refusing to confirm Kennedy could be seen as senators turning their backs on the millions of Americans who support the MAHA agenda and helped send Trump back to the White House to enact the food and health policies that Kennedy’s campaign helped push into the limelight, according to several Kennedy supporters.

“If RFK Jr. does not get Senate approval, I think there will be a huge backlash,” Valerie Smith, a metabolic health coach and Kennedy supporter, told the DCNF in an interview. “The millions of votes that went to Trump getting re-elected are the same people that are going to be very vocal if RFK Jr. doesn’t get in there [HHS].”

GOP senators voting no on Kennedy’s confirmation could also be viewed as alienating the nontraditional Republican constituencies, such as MAHA advocates, that Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was able to successfully court and bring into the party’s fold.

“I believe moms are a major part of why Trump won and a major reason for that is because he had the wisdom to bring on Kennedy,” Honeycutt told the DCNF. “The fact that Trump used the words pesticides, autism, chronic illness and cancer on a presidential platform — that moment was historic.”

“Finally, somebody has heard us, and we don’t care which party they come from,” Honeycutt added. “Our kids with autism, with autoimmune issues, with asthma, with allergies — finally, they have a champion and somebody that’s standing up and speaking up for us.”

But MAHA advocates are aware that the reason Kennedy may appeal to so many Americans — his independence from and history of taking corporate interests — is exactly why he may face hurdles along the way to his Senate confirmation, several Kennedy supporters told the DCNF.

“He’s a threat to this massive amount of profit that’s gone unregulated up until now,” Smith told the DCNF. “He’s coming up against some very powerful lobbyists and massive amounts of money. I just hope and pray he can overcome them.”

“He isn’t captured by any industry or corporation, so he’s free to do what’s right by the American people, not what’s in the best interest of corporations,” Courtney Swan, an integrative nutritionist and host of the health and wellness podcast, Realfoodology, told the DCNF.

‘Bipartisan Issue Of Our Time’

MAHA advocates are holding out hope that Democratic lawmakers, already embracing parts of Kennedy’s agenda, will also support the prospective HHS secretary’s confirmation.

“Making America Healthy [Again] is the bipartisan issue of our time, Means told the DCNF. “If you closed your eyes at a Trump-RFK rally, you wouldn’t know which party you were listening to.”

“Transparency, medical freedom, getting conflicts out of science — these are bipartisan issues that President Trump has led on, and it’s encouraging that leading Democrats have expressed support for the MAHA agenda,” Means added. “I’m optimistic they’ll support the unimpeachable bipartisan agenda that Bobby has espoused.”

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who have all complimented parts of Kennedy’s policy agenda, have left open the possibility they could vote in favor of Kennedy’s confirmation to lead HHS.

“I think what he is saying about the food industry is exactly correct,” Sanders said told CBS News during an interview on Dec. 5 during which he also expressed concern about Kennedy’s positions on water fluoridation and vaccines. “You have a food industry concerned about their profits, couldn’t care less about the health of the American people. I think they have to be taken on.”

A mutual understanding that the nation’s food supply is contributing to making Americans sicker could bring Republicans and Democrats together, according to several MAHA advocates.

“Americans have never been sicker, and they are sick and tired of being lied to and gaslit by the food industry and medical system,” Swan, who applauded Sanders’ commentary on the food industry, told the DCNF in a statement. “We are in this mess because we have allowed industry to take control of the narrative.”

“This needs to end and RFK Jr. is the only politician openly talking about wanting to change it,” Swan added. “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity for real change and for people to do the right thing.”

Senators across the political spectrum should take note of MAHA’s and Kennedy’s political ascendancy, Honeycutt told the DCNF.

“The most important issue before us today is health,” Honeycutt said. “Moms have been driving that issue for a very long time and we’re overjoyed that this new administration has heard us and is making health a primary issue.”

“We don’t care what party someone is from,” Honeycutt added. “If they are putting health first, they will have our support. And we want senators to remember that come election time.”

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

RFK Jr. Senate Hearings May Further Erode Trust In The Corporate Media

Whoopi Goldberg Says RFK Jr Is Fat Shaming People By Encouraging Healthy Diets And Exercise

RFK Jr. Wants Fluoride Out Of Water — And It’s Not Nearly As Crazy As His Detractors Claim

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Trump, RFK Jr’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Pledge Signals Major Shift In GOP Priorities

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Former President Donald Trump and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent vow to tackle public health issues together could signal a major shift in Republican priorities if the Trump campaign prevails on Election Day.

Trump has called for the creation of an independent commission with Kennedy’s input and pledged to address various Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) issues the former independent candidate has brought to the forefront, including improving the public’s intake of nutritious foods and addressing the rising trend of obesity in adults. These concerns, in addition to other MAHA priorities that have not historically found much support in the GOP such as calling for more stringent environmental regulations, indicate that a potential Trump administration may take a different approach on health, agricultural and environmental issues than during his first term in office.

Campaign officials, GOP lawmakers and health experts previewed a diverse set of MAHA priorities in interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Tackling the rising chronic disease rate that impacts roughly 60% of American adults is a shared point of concern.

“It’s finally turning the page and saying, ‘We want a health system, not a disease system,’” Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the DCNF. “For 50 years we built a disease system.”

“When we send President Trump back to the White House, he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to Make America Healthy Again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told the DCNF. “President Trump will also 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.”

Republicans and former Trump health officials are enthusiastic that marshaling the federal government in response to the country’s myriad health crises could turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.

Redfield endorsed the idea of an independent chronic disease commission and told the DCNF that the federal government “must get more serious in preventing chronic disease” to turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.

“It’s much more important to get real time, continuous, day-to-day monitoring of your chronic illness, not just the way the system works now where you check in every six months and someone tells you how you’re doing,” Redfield added. “No, you’ve got to check in every day.”

According to Redfield, a second Trump administration could cut the more than $4 trillion Americans spend on healthcare every year by half if federal agencies take an “all-of-government” approach to targeting substance use disorder, obesity and ultra-processed foods in addition to improving mental health services.

“These are, in my view, low-hanging fruit,” Redfield told the DCNF. “That alone would improve the American health system substantially.”

Texas Agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, who is helping vet candidates to serve in a second Trump administration, recounted running into a swarm of British schoolchildren while on a recent trade mission to the United Kingdom as providing further confirmation that a second Trump term must take action on obesity and processed foods, in an interview with the DCNF.

“90s kids and there wasn’t one fat kid in the bunch,” Miller, who has also called for bringing back the presidential fitness test program retired by the Obama administration in 2012, told the DCNF. “That kind of inspired me and made me think we’re not doing something right.”

To improve health outcomes for the more than 40% of Americans that are obese, Miller told the DCNF that a second Trump administration should consider ending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for processed foods.

“Why are we paying for soda drinks and cookies and junk food with SNAP benefits?” Miller told the DCNF. “That needs to stop.”

Miller also pointed to his Texas Fresh Farm program that provides fresh and local products to more than 5 million Texas school members as a program that should be implemented nationwide to improve a portion of the public’s intake of nutritious foods.

Republican lawmakers have also been supportive of a second Trump administration prioritizing nutrition as part of the MAHA agenda.

“As a physician, I can absolutely say that good nutrition leads to better patient outcomes 100 percent of the time. Healthy food is medicine and is the cure for many chronic diseases and curbing health care spending in the United States,” Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas told the DCNF in a statement. “American farmers set the gold standard for nutritious food, and the MAHA agenda will work with farmers and ranchers to continue producing the safest and most wholesome food at affordable prices for our country and the world.”

Implementing MAHA priorities will likely require the empowerment of federal government agencies whose budgets and enforcement powers Republican lawmakers could be inclined to shrink. Taking action on chronic disease and obesity will also necessitate buy-in from members of the public and lawmakers that have lost trust in institutions’ abilities to tell the truth and manage crises without infringing on a person’s individual autonomy.

“Our failed response to the pandemic opened the eyes of millions to the capture and corruption of federal agencies by the corporate interests who are supposed to be regulated by them,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told the DCNF. “As a result, the public’s interest is not being well-served or properly protected.”

“Getting public health officials in the next administration that really spend a lot of energy on trying to reestablish public trust is going to be fundamental to the success of the efforts of Making America Healthy Again,” Redfield told the DCNF. “The vaccine mandates were a big mistake. Closing down our economy—a big mistake. Shutting down our schools—a big mistake. So, there was a huge loss of credibility and trust that has to be rebuilt.”

Redfield is still a strong believer in vaccines, dubbing them as “the most important gift to modern medicine,” but said that vaccine mandates are a self-defeating approach and that debate about a vaccine’s safety and efficacy should be encouraged not denounced.

“I’ve always said that Bobby Kennedy is not anti-vax. Bobby Kennedy just wanted honest transparency and debate about vaccines,” Redfield told the DCNF. “We should foster discussion and debate, and if someone has a question about looking at data to determine a vaccine’s safety that shouldn’t be listed as anti-vax. That should be listed as wanting an honest, open discussion about what is the data?”

“As we secure our borders and rebuild our economy, we are also going to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said at a campaign event with Kennedy in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday. “We have more chronic health problems than any nation, more childhood diseases than we did just a generation ago. Millions of Americans are realizing that something is wrong. By getting this fixed not only will we have healthier families, we will save trillions and trillions of dollars and bring down the cost of healthcare.”

“We have a thousand chemicals in our food that are illegal in Europe, but the problem is not from those chemicals. The big problem is corruption in our federal agencies. These agencies are now owned by big Pharma by ‘Big Food’ and Big Agriculture,” Kennedy told the crowd at the same event. “Don’t you want a president that’s going to get the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want a president that’s going to get the corruption out of Washington, D.C.? And don’t we deserve a president of the United States that’s going to Make America Healthy Again?”

Redfield also told the DCNF that he’s willing to serve in a second Trump administration.

“I’m in the final turn,” Redfield told the DCNF. “I’d obviously work in any way I can to help the President and Bobby Kennedy and our nation move toward health.”

Kennedy did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

RFK Jr. Announces He Will ‘Actively’ Campaign With Donald Trump, Says Other Democrats Will Join The Team

House Republicans Call On Federal Agency To Drop COVID Vaccine Rules

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.