"MAGA's Victory: Rise of MAHA, the Trump Movement's 'Healthier' Side | Vanity Fair"

When Donald Trump took the stage in Florida at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday to deliver a declaration of victory, he promised his gathered supporters “the golden age of America” in his return to the White House. You may be surprised at the number of white women with babies on their hips, front-facing cameras trained on their highlighted cheekbones, nodding right along with him on their social media accounts–but only if you haven’t familiarized yourself with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again, MAHA for short, a “health plan” custom-fit to appeal to those who proudly brand themselves as free-thinking mamas and boss babes. Hey girl, we’re gonna make America healthy again!

“We're the party of common sense,” Trump said in that speech. And that common sense apparently means letting Kennedy, his former Republican Party rival, “go wild” with the nation's healthcare policies. Kennedy, an on-the-record anti-vaxxer, has boasted about his brain being partially eaten by a worm that left him with both short-term and long-term memory loss among other cognitive effects—and that he’d eat five more and still be chill “with a six-worm handicap.”

“He’s going to help make America healthy again,” Trump said of Kennedy, the man he accused as recently as May of being an undercover Democrat in cahoots with President Joe Biden to fulfil a radical leftist agenda. “He’s a great guy and he really means that he wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it.” During his rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump teased the news of this new health czar, saying, “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 medicines.”

Right-leaning social media influencers like Jessica Reed Kraus, who posts endless typo-riddled Instagram stories under the handle @houseinhabit, and their merry bands of wine moms and girl bosses have long waited for this moment: Validation that they, too, can “go wild on medicines,” no matter how many lives it puts in danger. Should Kennedy be instated to this unnamed high-ranking public health role (both he and Trump have waffled about what the position would actually be, but Kennedy seems to be participating in the time-honored far-right tradition of saying something absolutely insane a whole bunch of times and hoping that makes it true, presto change-o), his intention is to dismantle and privatize the foundations of public health initiatives.

When Kennedy dropped his presidential campaign and threw his support behind Trump, he launched his MAHA initiative, rebranding himself as both a Trump Guy and a Health Guy in one fell swoop.

According to the associated PAC’s website, which sells branded hats (this party adores a hat), the key to health lies in “health freedom” and “removing harmful toxins from our food, water, and air.”

In an interview with NPR, Kennedy said that on day one of Trump’s second administration, he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. “Now we have fluoride in toothpaste,” he said, conveniently skimming over people who might not have access to toothpaste, even as he later displayed remarkable flexibility bending over backwards to rationalize Republicans as “the party of the American poor.”

Left unsaid in that interview: His past assertions (plural) that the chemicals in tap water are making kids gay and trans. His talking points lately have leaned more on his also-false beliefs that fluoride causes arthritis, bone fractures, and bone cancer. Kennedy would like to be in charge of medical research in this mystical role, because, see, he's done his own.

While speaking with NPR, Kennedy also said he’d work “immediately” on changes to vaccine regulations and research, disingenuously explaining, “We're not going to take vaccines away from anybody. We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now. The science on vaccine safety, particularly has huge deficits and we're going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children's vaccinations.”

This is where Kennedy links arms with all those earth mamas and wellness influencers who “did their own research” and “made the right choice for their families”: Saying that he’s not going to “take vaccines away” does not mean policy couldn’t make them much harder to obtain. And by loosening requirements to vaccinate children, leading to lower adoption rates, vaccines become less effective at preventing disease and needless death. That research that Kennedy and the influencers did apparently did not include reading up on herd immunity and the role that individual accountability plays in community well-being.

Longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who keeps threatening us with finding a way to never ever die, has hopped on the MAHA bandwagon and posted a thigh-baring pic cuddling up to RFK Jr. this week, and former NASCAR driver Danica Patrick (who posted photos of herself sulking on the floor after she and Krauss were denied entry to the Trump campaign’s election night festivities) is sharing memes that imply Kennedy’s arm muscles make him a more qualified leader in the health space than others. If that’s the case, let’s cut the tape to Trump’s medical summary. Oh, oops, can’t do that—he refused to release that. Former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger, currently leading Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard, is a fan, facing criticism for a now-deleted comment asking Russell Brand where she can get a MAGA-style Make Jesus First Again hat (again with the hats!) after posting a video proclaiming that she was “on my way to make the right decision today!” on Election Day, conveniently and bravely omitting what that decision was.

The bombastic Trump attitude may at times seem at odds with the Ballerina Farm wannabes and their sprawling broods, a picturesque life off the grid fueled by unpasteurized milk and sunshine with that one “I think I like this little life” line from that song playing on a constant loop in the background, but consider that so many of these “wellness”-minded people consider themselves to be freethinking rebels, a value that Trump also cherishes, albeit with wildly different understandings of how to use bronzer.

In a late October tweet, Kennedy warned the FDA to “1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Among things that he claimed about the agency was that it practiced “aggressive suppression” of, among other things, “vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, [and] exercise” because they “can’t be patented by Pharma.” Who are these monsters who are against sunshine? Kennedy’s MAHA platform is a public health nightmare, wrapped in the Trojan horse of language about good, clean living.

In October, he also accused several federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Disease Control, and the Department of Agriculture of being “sock puppets for the industries that they’re supposed to regulate.” If you listen to Kennedy, all those agencies will be under his purview in the new Trump administration.

If all the newly pumped MAHA tradwives need something cute and farmhouse-chic to slurp up Kennedy’s Kool-Aid, great news: He has just the whimsical heart-emblazoned glass for you.

Oh, and don’t forget your hat.

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