Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s alliance with Donald Trump drew a new crowd of voters to the future president — a crowd focused on chronic disease, health and wellness, and the corruption of top federal agencies.
The Daily Wire reported in September on the “movement happening” within the health and wellness industry after Kennedy endorsed Trump for president on August 26. Multiple health and wellness influencers told The Daily Wire that they had voted Democrat or Independent their entire lives, but hearing Trump champion their cause made them change course.
“Oh God, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” health and wellness influencer Courtney Swan shared in a phone interview with The Daily Wire at the time. “I have been waiting my entire adult voting life for a presidential candidate to acknowledge how sick our country is.”
According to one of the major PACs backing RFK and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, MAHA played a “decisive” role in Trump’s historic victory, drawing together doctors, crunchy moms, health influencers, young women, and more.
Congratulations @realDonaldTrump on your historic victory. Let’s bring the country together and Make America Healthy Again!
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 6, 2024
“The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) PAC played a pivotal role in the 2024 election by mobilizing a powerful coalition of health-conscious voters and RFK Jr. supporters to back Donald Trump,” Jeff Hutt, director of Advocacy and Outreach for the MAHA PAC, told The Daily Wire. “Our outreach programs strategically targeted more than 1.1 million voters in critical swing states, leveraging cutting-edge digital, OTT, and radio campaigns to deliver more than 2.2 million impressions in the final days.”
The MAHA PAC specifically focused on Michigan and Wisconsin, where “radical secretaries of state” refused to remove Kennedy from the ballot. Hutt believes this was done in an effort to siphon votes from Trump.
“By intensifying our efforts in these states, we ensured that pro-health, pro-freedom voters united under Trump’s leadership, delivering the margins necessary for victory,” he explained.
“MAHA’s work wasn’t just about voter contact,” Hutt said, “it was about building a movement. By channeling the energy of RFK Jr.’s supporters — voters passionate about health freedom and government accountability — we expanded Trump’s base and secured crucial wins in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”
“We also made serious inroads in traditionally challenging states like New Hampshire and Virginia, dramatically increasing their competitiveness,” Hutt argued. “This election proved that when Americans rally around shared values of making America healthy and great again, transformative victories are within reach.”
(Photo by OLIVIER TOURON/AFP via Getty Images)
Three hours after an assassin tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, health expert Calley Means called Kennedy, who at the time had not yet endorsed Trump or dropped out of the race. Means, who had long been advising Kennedy, reportedly told Kennedy that he’d been advising Trump and wanted to connect the two men.
“‘I said, I don’t think so,’” Kennedy said in an interview with Tucker Carlson, explaining that he thought his wife would be completely opposed to such a union. “I called Cheryl up and she said to me, you should hear them out.”
Kennedy then got a text from Carlson, who shared Trump’s number and told Kennedy: “He’s waiting for your call.”
“I called him and had a great conversation with him,” Kennedy explained. He flew out to meet Trump the next day and was very impressed with their conversations. When he attempted to speak with Kamala Harris, he was told that Harris was not open to even speaking with him. Ultimately, he endorsed Trump.
Trump released a video in early June announcing a plan to address chronic illnesses and other health problems, particularly among children. He also pointed to increasing concerns that “Big Pharma” is profiting from American health issues.
“It is time to ask: What is going on?” Trump, the Republican nominee at the time, said in the video. “Is it the food that they eat? The environment that we live in? The over-prescription of certain medications? Is it the toxins and chemicals that are present in our homes?”
When Trump took the stage in Arizona to accept Kennedy’s endorsement on August 26, he praised Kennedy’s “decades of work as an advocate for the health of our families and our children.”
“Nobody’s done more,” he said of Kennedy. “Millions and millions of Americans who want clean air, clean water, and a healthy nation have concerns about toxins in our environment and pesticides in our foods.”
“That is why today, I’m repeating my pledge to establish a panel of top experts working with Bobby to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more,” Trump added. “We want every child in America to grow up and to live a long and healthy life.”
Post-election, it appears that Kennedy’s influence on Trump is far from over. Before he won, Trump repeatedly said that Kennedy would play a role in his administration.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump told the crowds at Madison Square Garden shortly before the election.
Following Trump’s victory, Kennedy told NBC News that the president-elect has been very specific about what he wants Kennedy to do: clean up the corruption of the agencies, “particularly the conflicts of interests that have turned those agencies into captive agencies for the pharmaceutical industries, and the food industry, the other industry that they’re supposed to be regulating.”
He also has promised Trump to return those agencies to their “gold-standard science, empirically based, evidence-based medicine that they were” when he was a child, and to make America healthy again by ending the chronic disease epidemic.
“President Trump has told me that he wants to see measurable, concrete results within two years, in terms of a measurable diminishment in chronic disease among America’s kids,” he added.
President Trump has asked me to do three things:
1. Clean up the corruption in our government health agencies.
2. Return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science.
3. Make America Healthy Again by ending the chronic disease epidemic. pic.twitter.com/WHMOsD0CiI— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 6, 2024
Kennedy is already starting to have influence within the next Trump administration. The Hill reported Monday that Kennedy has expressed opposition to Marco Rubio as the next Secretary of State, “advocating for someone who is less neocon.” He’s also advocated for Senator Rick Scott of Florida to replace Mitch McConnell as leader of the senate, warning: “Without Rick Scott, the entire Trump reform agenda wobbly.”
