Opinion: Why Trump and RFK Jr. won’t ‘make America healthy again’

In the first four minutes of a recent video for his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign promoting Donald Trump for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presents a seemingly compelling case about how America’s toxin-laden food system harms us and, worse, our children, contributing to chronic and often fatal diseases. He features unhealthy products such as Cap’n Crunch cereal, Cheez-It crackers and Doritos chips.
Then, much like other moments in RFK Jr.’s strange political trajectory — which has included peddling conspiracy theories on vaccines and other issues — his “MAHA” campaign plunges into outright falsehoods.
While Kennedy is correct that Democrats have often allowed corporations to put a toxic array of additives into our foods, he bizarrely (and falsely) claims Trump banned such chemical additives. In fact, Trump and Republicans have overturned and opposed efforts to rein in the deadly chemicalization of our meals.
As one former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official told NBC News, “There was a huge amount of pressure to approve chemicals” despite the risks they pose to public health.
It’s one of the many strange things about Kennedy marketing Trump as a president who would make America healthier: The facts show the opposite. The evidence from Trump’s first term shows that if elected this fall, he would make America less healthy — again.
Here are a few of the many ways in which Trump undermined food safety and public health in his first term:
Regrettably, Democrats in Congress and the White House bear some responsibility for corporations proliferating toxins in our food and agriculture, and under both parties, the EPA and FDA have often been feeble in regulating these threats. But the evidence shows that Trump and Republicans enable more harm, packing these key agencies with industry lobbyists and executives, reversing and stalling action to control dangerous chemicals, and gutting regulations to protect consumer health.
Would Vice President Kamala Harris make America healthier? Her record suggests so. In a rare move, Scientific American endorsed Harris, citing her support for expanding healthcare access (which, studies show, improves people’s long-term health), capping prices on life-preserving prescription drugs such as insulin and acting to diminish the deadly harms of guns and climate change.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could indeed be a force for a healthier America — if he followed the evidence and endorsed Harris instead of Trump.
Christopher D. Cook is a journalist and the author of “Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis.”