Former President Donald Trump must have gotten the message that crunchy moms have fallen hard for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his strong chin, and his strong stance against universal pharmaceuticalization.
On Wednesday, Trump released a video in which he promised, if elected president, to investigate the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the rise of autism, infertility, and illness. Trump has reason to fear being silent about the American people’s poor and rapidly deteriorating health.
In response, Kennedy, who is running for the Democrat presidential nomination, said he loves “this brand of plagiarism” and that he hopes all other presidential candidates will start talking about Americans’ health. If health becomes a theme in the 2024 presidential debates, then Kennedy could have an advantage.
AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and dozens of other pharmaceutical companies buy up the corporate press’s advertisement space, including as much as 70 percent of prime-time news shows. And they do not seem likely to allow inquiry into the possible connection between rising prescription drug usage and declining life expectancy, increasing disease, and metastasizing chronic health issues among the American people.
But as social media and long-form interviews replace the corporate press, long-silenced questions about health and vitality are emerging. Trump probably does not know he needs to fight to retain right-wing neo-hippies amped by false and misleading Covid vaccine claims, but someone on his team might.
Kennedy poses a problem not only to Trump but to the entire Republican Party. Their problem does not end with the online mom influencers spreading information about nutrition and the ineffectiveness of Big Pharma’s interventions. Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Trump, said she would vote for Kennedy over most Republicans.
There are cracks in the America First and MAGA faction’s support for the Republican nominee if Trump does not win the nomination. They look at the political divide not along strict ideological lines but as deep state versus America First — so Kennedy, whose Ukraine war and Covid skepticism landed him in America First’s good graces, arouses far greater sympathy than Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and other Republican presidential candidates.
Certainly, Trump did not mention pharmaceutical drugs and disease merely to attract supporters from Kennedy. Trump has voiced concerns about autism and vaccination for years. Due to his stance on this issue, the corporate press labeled all Republicans anti-vaxxers, until Trump propelled the disastrous program to create a Covid shot. The fallout from that political choice has alienated Republicans who distrust pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, especially in the wake of lockdowns.
It’s becoming politically relevant to reexamine any connections between interventions such as vaccines, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, contraceptive drugs, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and the rise of childhood illnesses, anxiety, depression, suicide, and widespread chronic disease.
Polls, like Gallup’s Most Important Problem survey, might not capture this change because environmental concerns get lumped in with climate change ideology, health care debates are never about health, and conversations about disease have focused on topics such as Covid and cancer research. Few politicians treat health in a holistic sense, rather than as a policy debate about whether we should have socialist or free-market health care — as if that question were not decided decades ago.
From anecdotal evidence and Kennedy’s 17 percent support in the Democrat presidential primary, it appears these views have spread outside obscure internet circles. Opposition to pharmaceutical drugs and industrial food products has grown organically as each generation confronts a persistent and growing list of ailments.
It seems that every other couple you meet suffers from infertility or has in the past. American women suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome at four times the rate of U.K. women, according to one study.
Everyone knows someone who has chronic gut issues such as Chron’s disease, irritable bowel disease, or undefined food sensitivities. One study found that more than 60 percent of Americans suffered from a gastrointestinal disorder in the week before they were surveyed.
Almost everyone knows someone who has had to have an appendix or gallbladder removed, who suffers from cancer, thyroid imbalance, hormonal dysregulation, slow metabolism, obesity, high blood pressure, or so many other chronic diseases.
Kennedy has publicly connected such issues to America’s uniquely dense vaccination schedule, although he says more research is needed. He often notes that American children almost never suffered from autism before the 1970s, let alone common ailments like asthma, obesity, or food allergies.
Most American kids receive their first vaccine, a Hepatitis B shot, at birth. They get about 25 shots by the time they are 15 months old, depending upon whether they receive optional vaccines, like the annual shots for influenza and Covid.
As chairman of the World Mercury Project, Kennedy fought to remove mercury from food products and from flu and tetanus shots. But he has not said that all vaccinations are dangerous so much as that the public simply does not know all of their potential effects. Corporate and political interests manage all the scientific data related to them.
“The research has been designed and written by the industry,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy has expanded the health conversation into other political topics, including the Second Amendment and mass shootings. When Jordan Peterson asked him about mass shootings, he promised to investigate prescription drugs, particularly SSRIs, for their role in producing depraved homicidal behavior. On a Twitter space, when asked about guns, he called himself a “constitutional absolutist,” including on the Second Amendment, and promised he is “not going to take away anyone’s guns.”
Some conservatives have, perhaps wisely, opted to interpret these promises as mere campaign talk. During a Twitter interview, Kennedy also said gun confiscation is “not the right thing to do now,” not implying a firm constitutional belief but a submission to electoral necessity. Plus, many of Kennedy’s statements as a 2024 presidential candidate differ significantly from those made in the first 40 years of his career.
As Kennedy dwells on his campaign’s central issues — the undisguised marriage of corporate and state power, the rise in chronic disease, the deterioration of civil liberties under medical tyranny, and the Ukraine war — he has consistently staked out positions to retain independent conservative support.
He promised to secure the border and oppose men’s entrance into women’s sports. He has criticized his own party as “pro-corporate, pro-war, and pro-censorship.” Kennedy has rejected his party’s climate alarmism, despite his own former complicity in it.
Rather than “top-down controls,” he claims he wants “free market capitalism” to solve the nation’s environmental issues, which will require the federal government to end corporate privileges and monopoly powers.
These centrist opinions might not mean much if his presidency would threaten the Dobbs decision. Kennedy has defended the old-school Democrat position on abortion, calling it a “tragedy” that the government should allow.
That makes for an open question about Supreme Court nominees. Perhaps he could vow to nominate candidates who would keep abortion a state-level issue. But not too many Republicans would risk surrendering a 50-year legal battle over abortion by voting for a Democrat, even if he does not see death by dilation and evacuation as a positive good.
Whether straight-ticket-voting Republicans think Kennedy is sincere or not, they must recognize that independent conservatives are not guaranteed Republican voters in 2024. Kennedy’s candidacy illuminates topics that split many typically Republican and Democrat voters from their own party leadership.
Joshua Paladino is a staff editor at The Federalist.
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