The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement played a large role in bringing a new crop of voters to the ballot box on Election Day to vote Republican after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., ended his independent run for president and endorsed Donald Trump last August.
Together, they made it clear that tackling the chronic disease epidemic and the intrinsic and extrinsic factors responsible for making Americans sick would be a top priority for a second Trump administration. Kennedy has since been confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and has promised “nothing is going to be off limits” as he oversees “a new era of radical transparency” at the agency.
But those efforts could be stymied by well-funded and well-organized forces that have a lot to lose by disrupting the status quo. On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mark Hyman, MD, co-founder of Function Health, to discuss the challenges Kennedy will face and why MAHA is bigger than politics.
U.S. Measles Outbreak
Kennedy faced an uphill battle in his Senate confirmation process earlier this year as he encountered skepticism from both sides of the political aisle over issues like vaccine mandates. The media has similarly taken aim at RFKJ, most recently drawing parallels between a deadly measles outbreak in the southwest and the HHS secretary.
Two children – both unvaccinated members of a Mennonite community in Texas – have died since February due to complications from measles. Kennedy was at the funeral of the eight year old who passed away last week on Monday, after which he released a statement publicly backing the MMR vaccine as the most effective way to prevent the spread of the disease.
The media seized on his remarks and used them to smear the secretary and his past criticism of childhood vaccine mandates. Missing in the coverage? Crucial context about who the current outbreak is most impacting: Members of the Mennonite community, who are largely unvaccinated for religious reasons held long before RFKJ became head of HHS.
As reported in Tuesday’s AM Update, vaccine rates are significantly lower in these groups across the board, not just for MMR, making outbreaks more likely. Of the approximately 500 measles cases in Texas, Gaines County, which is home to a substantial Mennonite population, accounts for 315 of them.
Megyn said the situation is but the latest example of why coverage of Kennedy must be taken with a grain of salt. “My feeling is for the next four years… we need to be super wary of hit pieces on him because the odds are they have been planted by one of his detractors,” she explained. “He went down there out of empathy to this funeral and they’re like, ‘You’re to blame’… That kind of story gets amplified, and I don’t think it’s totally organic.”
The Powers That Be
But he is not just up against the media. “He’s got a lot of forces against him,” Dr. Hyman, a close friend of Kennedy, noted. “There is a multi-trillion dollar industry that is basically wanting him to fail. It threatens the food industry, the farming industry, the pharmaceutical industry.”
As he explained, one big focus of the Trump administration will be examining the nation’s food supply “to change the things from the top down,” so that “we produce food that is healthier,” “we have clear labeling on foods that people are getting,” and we have access in a way that we don’t have now to healthier options.”
While that might seem like a common sense goal everyone can get on board with, Dr. Hyman said there will be pushback. “I think there is a sort of a tension between the [United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)] and HHS because the USDA basically is there to support farmers and not necessarily support the health of Americans,” he said. “And they essentially are creating all the diseases inadvertently that Health and Human Services and Medicare and Medicaid are having to take care of. It’s like the right hand is actually making the left hand’s job a lot harder.”
There are also dueling interests, he said, in medicine. “Whether it’s the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, some of them are doing good things, but, on the other hand, they are also funded in large part by the pharma and food industries,” he noted.
A Healthier Horizon
Even so, Dr. Hyman believes Kennedy has the opportunity to enact meaningful change if he is “able to get clear on what his objectives are” and prioritize “the low hanging fruit” with Trump’s backing. In fact, the paths to “wins” are already being paved.
“There are 30-plus bills around the country in different states… to get rid of the chemicals and dyes in food; or to have SNAP waivers to get rid of soda; or to have nutrition education, like in Texas, for doctors; or to stop punishing kids by restricting recess,” he noted. “These things are happening. The MAHA movement has sort of catalyzed this groundswell.”
As Kennedy and his team work on policy changes at the highest levels, Megyn said the grassroots determination of the MAHA movement should not be underestimated. “The MAHA mom thing is real – they are out there and they are pissed off about what has been done,” she concluded. “I am happily and proudly [a MAHA mom] because I am pissed off about what these industries have done to me and to my family and how hard they have made it for us all.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Dr. Hyman by tuning in to episode 1,044 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.