Michelle Obama.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump is looking forward to a triumphant November. It’s a time of big feelings and even bigger promises, the most surprising beneficiary of which may be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services. “I’m going to let him run wild on health care,” Trump said a pre-election rally at Madison Square Garden, shortly before he installed Gov. medical research device under the influence of a skeptical of vaccines who believes milk must be unpasteurized. Thus, MAGA was merged with MAHAor “Make America Healthy Again,” RFK Jr.’s plan to reshape the chemical makeup of Americans’ bodies by waging war on food additives and sedentary lifestyles.

Trump’s support for MAHA is surprising, not least because of his own ruinous policies. personal eating habits. During his first term, he sabotaged the previous federal initiative to encourage Americans to eat healthier, an initiative spearheaded by former First Lady Michelle Obama called “Let’s Move!” ”, who became the target of Trump’s vendetta against her husband. After little thought, Trump authorized then-Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to go back Obama-era restrictions on the nutritional content of lunches provided at school. The episode not only demonstrates Trump’s hypocrisy and capriciousness, but also casts serious doubt on RFK Jr.’s prospects as a disruptor of the healthcare status quo.

“Let’s move!” » had big ambitions when it launched in 2010: to end childhood obesity within a generation through a mix of public awareness campaigns and food policy. On this last front, new guidelines, defended by the Childhood Obesity Task Forcedesigned to limit the calories, sugar and sodium content of foods given to children at school. But as with almost everything Barack and Michelle Obama have done, this proposal has sent conservatives into a difficult situation. hysterical. “Don’t touch my fries, lady,” joked Glenn Beck, while Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Michelle Obama’s waistline and made fun of her for eating ribs. Cries of “food police!” » has become the norm. Brian Kilmeade warned that the salt would be confiscated. Sean Hannity asked, “Does every family in America need a government-appointed dietitian to tell them that this food will make you fat?

Added to this media outrage machine is Republican obstructionism in Congress. Rep. Michele Bachmann accused the president of trying to establish a “nanny state.” When Barack Obama balked at the backlash in the run-up to the 2012 election, his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, joked that the president “was going to dig up the First Lady’s organic garden and install a Bob’s Big Boy.” In 2015, anti-Obama sentiment led to a Republican bill in the Senate to roll back old USDA nutrition regulations, and when Trump was sworn in, rescinding the “Let’s Move!” was one of his first acts as president.

The fact that Trump years later green-lighted a similar initiative led by one of his acolytes can perhaps be put down to pure spite. But it also speaks to the fact that hatred of the Obamas is no longer the driving force of Republican politics as it once was and that some of their ideas, like being more conscientious about what kids eat, may have some appeal. bipartisan. With the rise of professional women and spotlight podcasters, the old conservative consensus that eating junk food is a sign of red-blooded Americanness is fading, while encouraging diets low in salt, sugar, and additives is no longer the incarnation of Big Brother. Yet even though the Obamas had laudable goals, they were ultimately attacked by the same forces that make it hard to believe that RFK Jr.’s stated agenda will be far-reaching and that once drove Republicans out of Congress has recategorize tomato sauce as a vegetable in order to keep pizza on the school lunch menu.

The biggest obstacle to RFK Jr. doing anything substantial to mitigate the public health threats posed by big agriculture is that it would disrupt the cash flows of the companies that profit from keeping Americans unhealthy and whose interests are more relevant to the Republican Party than anything else. Jr. might suggest. The regulations that Trump rolled back with Perdue in 2017 can also be understood as a deregulatory measure intended to benefit big food companies. Trump’s true sympathies can be gleaned most accurately from the way he tried to install Carl’s Jr. CEO in his previous cabinet and the fact that he never expressed interest in enlargement access to health care. It seems unlikely that he will appoint a Cabinet member as dangerous to this overall pro-business agenda as RFK Jr. himself believes.