How the Make America Healthy Again movement swung from RFK Jr. to Trump

Washington CNN —
Calley Means says it was the day Donald Trump was almost assassinated last summer that made everything crystalize for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Means, an influencer and activist leader in the exploding clean food and health space, had become close with Kennedy over their common cause against the food and pharmaceutical industries.
He says the obvious connection both he and Kennedy made, watching what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, was to the history-altering assassinations of Kennedy’s father and uncle. But it turned into more.
“I felt the spiritual urge and need to call Bobby and suggest to him that he should call President Trump, and he was thinking the same thing,” Means recalled to CNN. “I was able to facilitate that conversation that night and from my small vantage point saw a real bond developed between the two men, not about politics at all, but about this issue of why kids are getting so sick.”
Kennedy’s own 2024 presidential campaign didn’t take off. The Democrat-turned-independent did still have support from some who bought into debunked conspiracies and scientifically specious claims about childhood vaccines. Yet many of his now loyal supporters were not on the political fringe, but rather people – especially parents – drawn to his crusade against chemicals in food and the government that allows it.
“I was convinced through our experience and through meeting people that this was a real issue,” Means said. “Clearly Bobby Kennedy is resonating, but the two leading candidates weren’t talking about the issue enough.”
The phone call that Means brokered changed that.
Trump agreed to take up the health issues Kennedy cared about, and in return Kennedy endorsed a Republican for president, a seismic event for a man with a name synonymous with the Democratic party and a shotgun marriage of two very different groups that reshaped traditional political coalitions, at least for now: MAGA and MAHA, Make America Healthy Again.
MAHA leaders blur party lines
Means refers to himself as a George W. Bush Republican who “blindly” supported pharmaceutical and food companies and even lobbied in Washington on their behalf. He was a Never Trumper in 2016 and drifted away from the GOP.
When his mother passed away suddenly in 2021 of pancreatic cancer, he and his sister Cassie, a doctor, started careers in activism promoting the connections between health and food as medicine, becoming bold faced names in the movement.
Vani Hari, another MAHA leader, has roots in the Democratic party. She volunteered for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and was a delegate at the 2012 Democratic convention, where she held up a sign that said “Label GMO’s.”
But as her activism grew, so did her disillusionment with politics.
“I kind of gave up on my government leaders,” she said.
Hari’s personal story, which she shares with her followers online, in books and in a food company, led her to start her “Food Babe” brand.
She says her immigrant parents wanted to eat like Americans, and that meant a lot of fast and processed food. She talks about being plagued by everything from asthma to eczema and was prescribed multiple medications to help.
After she was hospitalized in her 20s and her appendix was removed, she started learning about chemicals in food, changed her diet and said she began to feel better. She started a blog and began to rally likeminded people, mostly women, to become citizen activists – pressuring companies like Chick-fil-A and Subway to take chemicals out of their food.
In October, she led a protest in Battle Creek, Michigan, delivering 400,000 signatures to WK Kellogg Co, pushing the company to keep its pledge to remove food dyes from cereals.
(L-R) The Free Press’ Honestly with Bari Weiss hosts Jillian Michaels, Vani Hari, and Calley Means on January 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. Leigh Vogel/Getty Images
She had already inched back towards politics after she heard Kennedy talk about the food issues she dedicated her life to.
“I guess that was the first time that I was like, there’s someone who actually gets it,” Hari said.
Though she says she is still technically a Democrat, when Kennedy was tapped to be Health and Human Services Secretary, she rallied her followers to help.
“I was so not political until after the election was over and then I was like, ‘OK, he’s president now like let’s get in the game,’” she said.
MAHA lobbying and worries about RFK’s anti-vaccine beliefs
When Sen. Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor from Louisiana, took to the Senate floor to explain his support for Kennedy to run the sprawling agency that governs America’s health system, he was open about the onslaught of lobbying he got from American citizens “impassioned about the need to address chemicals in our food, and a belief that we are victims of large, impersonal forces maximizing profits while sacrificing our health.”
That was in tune with the MAHA movement.
But the GOP senator, who appears to have single handedly saved Kennedy’s nomination with his support, also used the opportunity to push back hard against Kennedy’s frequent claims about vaccines. Cassidy – like most in the medical community – warned those views are dangerous and wrong.
“Mr. Kennedy has been insistent that he just wants good science and to ensure safety. But on this topic, the science is good, the science is credible. Vaccines save lives. They are safe. They do not cause autism. There are multiple studies that show this. They are a crucial part of our nation’s public health response,” said Cassidy.
The senator also insisted that Kennedy assured him he would not change the vaccine approval system or remove the promise that vaccines are safe from the CDC website.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 30: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) speaks with U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) after testifying in his Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions confirmation hearing. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) North America/Getty Images
A lot of players, including Vice President JD Vance, negotiated those discussions to get Cassidy to yes.
Calley Means was a part of those conversations too.
“I am completely confident that Bobby Kennedy will come in with opinions and believe those opinions do not matter. Bobby Kennedy is coming in to institute a process,” Means said.
But Means knows there are lot of skeptics, including many Democrats who don’t trust Kennedy and his years espousing vaccine conspiracy theories.
“This is an emotional important issue, and I know that many people on the left watching that can’t stand Bobby Kennedy and stand President Trump,” said Means. But he urged them to keep an open mind.
Why MAHA was a blind spot for Democrats
Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior aide to Obama and co-host of the podcast Pod Save America, said his wife, a millennial mother of two, listens to wellness podcasts and follows its leaders on social media. She heard support there for Kennedy, and no counterpoint from anyone who supported Democratic party candidates.
“RFK Jr. has been sort of a maestro of going in these spaces and preying on people’s very legitimate concerns about health and wellness and pollution and things like that, and spinning stories that are very compelling but quite scientifically dubious. And we just weren’t there responding,” Pfeiffer said.
He argues that Democrats missed out on trying to capture voters from what is now the MAHA movement in part because they didn’t separate Kennedy’s conspiracies from people’s real concerns about food and wellness for their children.
“We were almost, I think, unintentionally too dismissive of the legitimate concerns that voters had about pollution, food safety, healthy foods,” Pfeiffer said. “We didn’t acknowledge that, while then disputing the solutions being proffered by RFK Jr, and the fact that Donald Trump and his administration are the exact wrong people to implement to address those concerns.”
To be sure, some Democrats, like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, did try to find that nuance when Kennedy was nominated for HHS Secretary, He embraced the concerns Kennedy expresses about the food and farm industries. Others like Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey did too.
Pfeiffer says the first step for Democrats in getting those voters who journeyed from supporting Democrats to Kennedy to Trump is to avoid being dismissive.
“Acknowledge that people have a right to be concerned about whether there are too many chemicals in our food, whether we’re not getting as healthy food as we can, whether powerful industries have too much say over government policy without you,” Pfeiffer said. “So you have to acknowledge those concerns and then offer your solutions for those so they’re different from what the Republicans offer.”