Public health experts, physicians, and scientists responded with fury and disgust to the news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services. If Kennedy—who has also promoted dangerous and ludicrous ideas about fluoride, 5G technology, and the causes of HIV/AIDS, among innumerable other pseudoscientific claims—assumes the position, “the damage he could do is near infinite,” warns Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist.
“He will do great harm—generational harm.”
The scope of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is immense: It sits over 13 other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Indian Health Service.
Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.
Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.
Having Kennedy in such a powerful role, according to University of Alberta law and public health professor Timothy Caulfield, is “horrifying. A genuine catastrophe.”
“This is a person who has spread deadly lies and conspiracy theories,” Caulfield, the author of several books on pseudoscience’s impact on public health, added. “He ignores evidence. He ignores experts. I have no doubt that he will do great harm—generational harm—to public health, trust in science, and biomedical research. Moreover, at the international level, he will platform, normalize, and legitimize pseudoscience and health misinformation, making it more ubiquitous and difficult to fact check.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a recognized expert on vaccines and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, is also deeply concerned. He told Mother Jones that he’s preparing a paper on “what could happen to our vaccine ecosystem,” he said.
“It could collapse and we could see polio in the wastewater and the return of regular measles and pertussis outbreaks,” he said. “And, of course, preparedness for H5N1 and other pandemic threats could suffer.”
Love, who tracks health misinformation online and recently faced vitriol from people aligned with the MAHA movement, sees a laundry list of threats to public health under a Kennedy-run department. “Honestly,” Love said, “if you look at the purview of HHS secretary, the damage he could do is near infinite. And none of his long history gives any indication he will actually do anything to improve health, especially for those of lower socioeconomic status.”
“I can honestly say it has never been this bad.”
He could “skew, redirect, and reallocate grant and research funding” toward “fringe research,” Love warns, “cut funding for education and public health initiatives like vaccine campaigns or other public health interventions like fluoridation,” and slow or halt regulatory approval “for vaccines, biologics, immunotherapies, and other critical medical interventions.” Because Kennedy has wrongly demonized Covid vaccines as “gene therapy,” Love suspects that he will be hostile to genuine applications of that science—“the leading edge of our research in cancer, autoimmunity, genetic disease, and latent viral infections. The hit to biotech is sure to be substantial.”
“Conversely, he could also loosen regulatory requirements for less-robust wellness interventions like his ‘peptides’ and ‘chelating’ therapies to get those through regulatory and give them an appearance of legitimacy,” she explained.
“This role would give him a global platform to spread misinformation…He can lie, spread falsehoods, and undermine scientific evidence beyond what he’s already done,” Love says. “I would expect he would spread more lies about causes of cancer, the ‘chronic disease’ epidemic, ‘toxic chemicals,’ and more. He can also delay or withhold communicating actual factual information” during public health crises like epidemics.
In charge of HHS, Kennedy could appoint what Love called “unqualified and ideological individuals” within the department and the agencies it oversees, who could “erode and erase these critical agencies from within. He could replace qualified advisory board members with unqualified people, further dismantling these agencies.”
Not everyone responded negatively to Kennedy’s nomination. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), himself a physician and former member of a fringe medical group that promoted vaccine suspicion, cheered the news, writing on Twitter/X: “Finally, someone to detox the place after the Fauci era. Get ready for health care freedom and MAHA!” Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also posted a welcoming message, saying Kennedy “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.” (A Polis spokesperson later released a statement saying the governor remained “opposed to RFK’s positions on a host of issues, including vaccines and banning fluoridation.”)
Even before Trump tapped him, Kennedy signaled a radical vision to reshape some of the US’ public health agencies to his liking. At an entrepreneurship conference last week, he laid out plans to fire and replace 600 workers at the National Institutes of Health. The NIH declined to comment on the plan, but the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees civil service workers, provided a statement: “OPM and the Biden-Harris Administration have a deep appreciation and respect for our country’s civil servants and the importance of a nonpartisan, merit-based civil service. We cannot comment on the actions of future administrations.”
Caulfield, the University of Alberta professor, summed up what many medical and public health professionals seem to be feeling as they look toward the prospect of Kennedy taking the job. “As someone who has worked in this space for decades,” he said, “I can honestly say it has never been this bad. It feels like we are stepping toward a new Dark Age.”
Public health experts, physicians, and scientists responded with fury and disgust to the news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services. If Kennedy—who has also promoted dangerous and ludicrous ideas about fluoride, 5G technology, and the causes of HIV/AIDS, among innumerable other pseudoscientific claims—assumes the position, “the damage he could do is near infinite,” warns Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist.
“He will do great harm—generational harm.”
The scope of the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is immense: It sits over 13 other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Indian Health Service.
Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.
Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.
Having Kennedy in such a powerful role, according to University of Alberta law and public health professor Timothy Caulfield, is “horrifying. A genuine catastrophe.”
“This is a person who has spread deadly lies and conspiracy theories,” Caulfield, the author of several books on pseudoscience’s impact on public health, added. “He ignores evidence. He ignores experts. I have no doubt that he will do great harm—generational harm—to public health, trust in science, and biomedical research. Moreover, at the international level, he will platform, normalize, and legitimize pseudoscience and health misinformation, making it more ubiquitous and difficult to fact check.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a recognized expert on vaccines and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, is also deeply concerned. He told Mother Jones that he’s preparing a paper on “what could happen to our vaccine ecosystem,” he said.
“It could collapse and we could see polio in the wastewater and the return of regular measles and pertussis outbreaks,” he said. “And, of course, preparedness for H5N1 and other pandemic threats could suffer.”
Love, who tracks health misinformation online and recently faced vitriol from people aligned with the MAHA movement, sees a laundry list of threats to public health under a Kennedy-run department. “Honestly,” Love said, “if you look at the purview of HHS secretary, the damage he could do is near infinite. And none of his long history gives any indication he will actually do anything to improve health, especially for those of lower socioeconomic status.”
“I can honestly say it has never been this bad.”
He could “skew, redirect, and reallocate grant and research funding” toward “fringe research,” Love warns, “cut funding for education and public health initiatives like vaccine campaigns or other public health interventions like fluoridation,” and slow or halt regulatory approval “for vaccines, biologics, immunotherapies, and other critical medical interventions.” Because Kennedy has wrongly demonized Covid vaccines as “gene therapy,” Love suspects that he will be hostile to genuine applications of that science—“the leading edge of our research in cancer, autoimmunity, genetic disease, and latent viral infections. The hit to biotech is sure to be substantial.”
“Conversely, he could also loosen regulatory requirements for less-robust wellness interventions like his ‘peptides’ and ‘chelating’ therapies to get those through regulatory and give them an appearance of legitimacy,” she explained.
“This role would give him a global platform to spread misinformation…He can lie, spread falsehoods, and undermine scientific evidence beyond what he’s already done,” Love says. “I would expect he would spread more lies about causes of cancer, the ‘chronic disease’ epidemic, ‘toxic chemicals,’ and more. He can also delay or withhold communicating actual factual information” during public health crises like epidemics.
In charge of HHS, Kennedy could appoint what Love called “unqualified and ideological individuals” within the department and the agencies it oversees, who could “erode and erase these critical agencies from within. He could replace qualified advisory board members with unqualified people, further dismantling these agencies.”
Not everyone responded negatively to Kennedy’s nomination. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), himself a physician and former member of a fringe medical group that promoted vaccine suspicion, cheered the news, writing on Twitter/X: “Finally, someone to detox the place after the Fauci era. Get ready for health care freedom and MAHA!” Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also posted a welcoming message, saying Kennedy “helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.” (A Polis spokesperson later released a statement saying the governor remained “opposed to RFK’s positions on a host of issues, including vaccines and banning fluoridation.”)
Even before Trump tapped him, Kennedy signaled a radical vision to reshape some of the US’ public health agencies to his liking. At an entrepreneurship conference last week, he laid out plans to fire and replace 600 workers at the National Institutes of Health. The NIH declined to comment on the plan, but the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees civil service workers, provided a statement: “OPM and the Biden-Harris Administration have a deep appreciation and respect for our country’s civil servants and the importance of a nonpartisan, merit-based civil service. We cannot comment on the actions of future administrations.”
Caulfield, the University of Alberta professor, summed up what many medical and public health professionals seem to be feeling as they look toward the prospect of Kennedy taking the job. “As someone who has worked in this space for decades,” he said, “I can honestly say it has never been this bad. It feels like we are stepping toward a new Dark Age.”
“Well America, I hope you like measles,” Jake Tapper joked Thursday evening on CNN, segueing into a breaking report on vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being tapped by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The timing couldn’t have been more apt, as Tapper had been hosting a […]
Just days after former President Donald Trump won the presidential election, his onetime-opponent turned supporter, the anti-vaccine superstar Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has set up a website to solicit suggestions for key Cabinet roles. Anyone can submit a name and vote for their favorite nominees across 12 areas of government, including health, food and agriculture, education, technology, and more. “Trump has stated that he was not able to ‘drain the swamp’ during his first term, and he’s welcomed Bobby’s expertise in getting the job done in his second term,” the site’s “About” section states. “But Bobby cannot do this alone, so he is now turning to the wisdom and expertise of his supporters.”
In the food and agriculture category, the current leading nominee is Zen Honeycutt, executive director of the anti-GMO group Moms Across America. In September, Honeycutt told me about how her group’s followers have changed over the years—many of them moving from being staunch Democrats to supporting Trump. As she said back then:
“I marched in the parade for gays to be able to get married,” she recalled. But she became disillusioned with what she saw as government overreach around school vaccine requirements. Mostly for that reason, she, her husband, and their three sons relocated a few years ago to a farm in North Carolina. Since then, she said, she has heard from “thousands and thousands” of other parents who had become disillusioned with what she described as “the fascism of the Democratic party,” such as “mandatory vaccines or maybe medication down the road.” she said. “We already have mandatory chemotherapy that kids have to get—you can get your kid taken away from you if you don’t give them chemo if they have cancer.” For these reasons, many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
Now, with the party she has championed earning a powerful electoral mandate, I checked back in with Honeycutt. She said she has been in touch with Kennedy’s team (which did not immediately respond to my request for comment) about a potential role that would allow her to “make a difference in transforming the food supply and health with the new administration.” In such a position, her goal, she explained, would be to rid the food supply of what she sees as toxins: pesticides—including the ubiquitous weedkiller glyphosate—food dyes, and genetically modified ingredients. She blames these impurities for rising autism and Alzheimer’s disease rates, as well as infertility, which she believes is in some ways a more pressing issue than abortion. Why? Because, she says, it affects 11 percent of women. “The Democrats in this past election made abortion a huge issue,” she said, “but the issue of infertility is actually seven times greater than the abortion issue.”
Honeycutt’s assertions about the directcontribution of food additives to illness aren’t backed by a robust body of high-quality scientific evidence, though some research suggests exposure to pesticides in utero could contribute to autism diagnoses. Some pesticides also have been shown to disrupt the endocrine system, which could in theory affect fertility, but robust studies showing a direct connection don’t exist.
For Honeycutt, however, the prospect of finally eliminating the additives she considers unhealthy is an exciting possibility. She believes that the lifestyle benefits of such a move could bring the fractured nation some peace. “When we do get the poison out of our food, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, you’re going to sleep better,” she said. “You’re going to lose weight, you’re going to feel better, you have better relationships, you’re going to have better sex.”
Aside from Honeycutt, so far, some of the most popular nominees for other roles on the Kennedy website include:
Dr. Simone Gold for the Department of Health and Human Services. Gold, who founded the Covid-denialist and anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, participated in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, an offense for which she spent 60 days in prison.
Sherri Tenpenny for the Department of Health and Human Services. Tenpenny is an anti-vaccine activist who promoted the disproven idea that vaccines turn people magnetic. She is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for failing to pay $650,000 in taxes.
Joel Salatin fora job at the Department of Agriculture. Salatin, a libertarian farmer and staunch critic of overregulation of agriculture, has become embroiled in controversies around Covid and remarks about Black Americans, including that “the Black community is in dysfunctional collapse.”
Mike Rowe for the Department of Labor. Rowe, the creator and host of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, has emerged as a critic of unions and as an anti-vaccine activist.
Tulsi Gabbard for “Peace Abroad.” Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress asa Democrat, has become a registered Independent and a strong supporter of President-elect Trump, endorsing him frequently in the conservative media.
Vivek Ramaswamy for a possible position within the Department of Education. A pharma executive who positioned himself to the right of Trump during his short-lived campaign for president, Ramaswamy in this role would be a leader in an agency that Trump has vowed to destroy.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is a possibilityfor secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Massie has advocated for fewer regulations around farm and food issues such as raw milk. Trump criticized him in 2020 for his antics around passing the coronavirus stimulus bill—but Massie found his way back into Trump’s good graces following the 2020 election by voting against reaffirming the peaceful transfer of power.
Honeycutt said she was particularly excited about the prospect of Massie, whom she described as “honest and smart and funny and really cares about people, and has a huge amount of experience with ranching and farmers and politics.” She said she’s aware of several other people who have been talking to the Kennedy team about potential roles, but she declined to name them. She did note that they nearly all had in common“the courage to speak out and speak up for health and be a part of the food movement.”
Just days after former President Donald Trump won the presidential election, his onetime-opponent turned supporter, the anti-vaccine superstar Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has set up a website to solicit suggestions for key Cabinet roles. Anyone can submit a name and vote for their favorite nominees across 12 areas of government, including health, food and agriculture, education, technology, and more. “Trump has stated that he was not able to ‘drain the swamp’ during his first term, and he’s welcomed Bobby’s expertise in getting the job done in his second term,” the site’s “About” section states. “But Bobby cannot do this alone, so he is now turning to the wisdom and expertise of his supporters.”
In the food and agriculture category, the current leading nominee is Zen Honeycutt, executive director of the anti-GMO group Moms Across America. In September, Honeycutt told me about how her group’s followers have changed over the years—many of them moving from being staunch Democrats to supporting Trump. As she said back then:
“I marched in the parade for gays to be able to get married,” she recalled. But she became disillusioned with what she saw as government overreach around school vaccine requirements. Mostly for that reason, she, her husband, and their three sons relocated a few years ago to a farm in North Carolina. Since then, she said, she has heard from “thousands and thousands” of other parents who had become disillusioned with what she described as “the fascism of the Democratic party,” such as “mandatory vaccines or maybe medication down the road.” she said. “We already have mandatory chemotherapy that kids have to get—you can get your kid taken away from you if you don’t give them chemo if they have cancer.” For these reasons, many former Democrats she has talked to “have found in the Independent party or the Republican party a home they can connect with around their personal health freedoms.”
Now, with the party she has championed earning a powerful electoral mandate, I checked back in with Honeycutt. She said she has been in touch with Kennedy’s team (which did not immediately respond to my request for comment) about a potential role that would allow her to “make a difference in transforming the food supply and health with the new administration.” In such a position, her goal, she explained, would be to rid the food supply of what she sees as toxins: pesticides—including the ubiquitous weedkiller glyphosate—food dyes, and genetically modified ingredients. She blames these impurities for rising autism and Alzheimer’s disease rates, as well as infertility, which she believes is in some ways a more pressing issue than abortion. Why? Because, she says, it affects 11 percent of women. “The Democrats in this past election made abortion a huge issue,” she said, “but the issue of infertility is actually seven times greater than the abortion issue.”
Honeycutt’s assertions about the directcontribution of food additives to illness aren’t backed by a robust body of high-quality scientific evidence, though some research suggests exposure to pesticides in utero could contribute to autism diagnoses. Some pesticides also have been shown to disrupt the endocrine system, which could in theory affect fertility, but robust studies showing a direct connection don’t exist.
For Honeycutt, however, the prospect of finally eliminating the additives she considers unhealthy is an exciting possibility. She believes that the lifestyle benefits of such a move could bring the fractured nation some peace. “When we do get the poison out of our food, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, you’re going to sleep better,” she said. “You’re going to lose weight, you’re going to feel better, you have better relationships, you’re going to have better sex.”
Aside from Honeycutt, so far, some of the most popular nominees for other roles on the Kennedy website include:
Dr. Simone Gold for the Department of Health and Human Services. Gold, who founded the Covid-denialist and anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, participated in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, an offense for which she spent 60 days in prison.
Sherri Tenpenny for the Department of Health and Human Services. Tenpenny is an anti-vaccine activist who promoted the disproven idea that vaccines turn people magnetic. She is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for failing to pay $650,000 in taxes.
Joel Salatin fora job at the Department of Agriculture. Salatin, a libertarian farmer and staunch critic of overregulation of agriculture, has become embroiled in controversies around Covid and remarks about Black Americans, including that “the Black community is in dysfunctional collapse.”
Mike Rowe for the Department of Labor. Rowe, the creator and host of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, has emerged as a critic of unions and as an anti-vaccine activist.
Tulsi Gabbard for “Peace Abroad.” Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress asa Democrat, has become a registered Independent and a strong supporter of President-elect Trump, endorsing him frequently in the conservative media.
Vivek Ramaswamy for a possible position within the Department of Education. A pharma executive who positioned himself to the right of Trump during his short-lived campaign for president, Ramaswamy in this role would be a leader in an agency that Trump has vowed to destroy.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is a possibilityfor secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Massie has advocated for fewer regulations around farm and food issues such as raw milk. Trump criticized him in 2020 for his antics around passing the coronavirus stimulus bill—but Massie found his way back into Trump’s good graces following the 2020 election by voting against reaffirming the peaceful transfer of power.
Honeycutt said she was particularly excited about the prospect of Massie, whom she described as “honest and smart and funny and really cares about people, and has a huge amount of experience with ranching and farmers and politics.” She said she’s aware of several other people who have been talking to the Kennedy team about potential roles, but she declined to name them. She did note that they nearly all had in common“the courage to speak out and speak up for health and be a part of the food movement.”
On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.
Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.
When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.
And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.
Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.
On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.
Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.
When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.
And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.
Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.
If Donald Trump becomes president again, it looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have his say over who gets which vaccines: Trump said at a rally last weekend that he would let RFK Jr. “go wild” on health should he win the White House. RFK Jr. said Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the CDC and FDA are housed; Trump’s campaign seemed to suggest that wasn’t set in stone.
A world where an anti-vax advocate would play a large role in shaping vaccine policy is kind of terrifying. While RFK Jr. does make extremely off-the-cuff comments, including about Covid-19 vaccines, some of Kennedy’s specific claims about vaccines may not be apparent unless you go looking for them.
Well, I went looking for them. Here are some of RFK Jr.’s claims about various childhood vaccines throughout the decades, most of which are usually required if you go to public schools. What’s perhaps the most disturbing underlying factor of all his vaccine conspiracy theories is the suggestion that a dead child—vaccines save a lot of lives—is better than an autistic or chronically ill one, conditions he claims vaccines cause.
Measles, Mumps, and Rubella
In a 2005 Rolling Stone article, RFK Jr. suggests that a rise in childhood vaccines was tied to an increase in kids being diagnosed with autism.
Before 1989, American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations—for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade. As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded.
RFK Jr. was not the first person to suggest a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Andrew Wakefield’s retractedLancet study linking the two, which was total nonsense, should take a lot of the blame. But RFK Jr. still promoted the conspiracy theory that the measles vaccine was linked to autism in a 2021 Fox News interview, and in his 2023 co-written book Vax Unvax, Kennedy also suggests that the measles vaccine is linked to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (and Haemophilus Influenzae B)
In the same Rolling Stone piece, RFK Jr. essentially claimed that Americans had been poisoning their kids with vaccines that contained thimerosal, which is no longer in routine childhood vaccines, except some versions of the flu vaccine.
Tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The FDA says that the thimerosal in vaccines has “significantly declined due to reformulation and development of new vaccines—not that the tiny amount of it in vaccines was linked to autism or other health issues. Kennedy also claimed that receiving multiple DTP vaccines raised infant mortality (the 2004 study which Kennedy and Brian Hooker, his cowriter, cite has not been replicated).
Hepatitis B
In a 2017 interview with Stat News, RFK Jr. said that the Hepatitis B vaccine hadn’t received enough testing. He seemed to find a new argument as to why the treatment wasn’t when thimerosal was removed:
The hepatitis B vaccines that are currently approved had fewer than five days of safety testing. That means that if the child has a seizure on the sixth day, it’s never seen.
Back to the infamous 2005 Rolling Stone piece: RFK Jr. seems to suggest that people should not trust the rotavirus vaccine because of financial conflicts of interest in its advocacy.
The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.” Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he “would make money” if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist’s direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. “It provides no conflict for me,” he insists. “I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it.”
In a 2023 Substack post, Paul Offit, the doctor RFK Jr. referred to in that excerpt, debunked both Kennedy’s claims about himself, and the shoddy science he relied on.
Polio
Type I diabetes is a serious illness—one that Kennedy stokes fears of in his book Vax Unvax. The book claims that Type I diabetes appears in about 21 of 100,000 kids vaccinated against polio, more than double the rate for those who were not vaccinated, according to research performed between 1990 and 2000. Kennedy and Hooker cite a single study to support their claim that the typical polio vaccine given until the year 2000 was dangerous. But most other research refutes this claim. Vax Unvax claims to want to “let the science speak,” per its subtitle, but doesn’t mention how polio can lead to permanent paralysis.
Influenza
As you can probably tell by now, Kennedy likes picking single studies to back his narrative. In Vax Unvax, Kennedy and Hooker point to one study that claims that kids who have gotten the seasonal flu vaccine are almost four times more likely to be hospitalized.
Kennedy’s strategy on childhood vaccines is to instill fear backed by lone studies, claiming they can make kids sicker, in opposition to decades of research that show that childhood vaccines stop kids from getting sicker—and let them avoidpreventable long-term health effects.
If Donald Trump becomes president again, it looks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have his say over who gets which vaccines: Trump said at a rally last weekend that he would let RFK Jr. “go wild” on health should he win the White House. RFK Jr. said Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the CDC and FDA are housed; Trump’s campaign seemed to suggest that wasn’t set in stone.
A world where an anti-vax advocate would play a large role in shaping vaccine policy is kind of terrifying. While RFK Jr. does make extremely off-the-cuff comments, including about Covid-19 vaccines, some of Kennedy’s specific claims about vaccines may not be apparent unless you go looking for them.
Well, I went looking for them. Here are some of RFK Jr.’s claims about various childhood vaccines throughout the decades, most of which are usually required if you go to public schools. What’s perhaps the most disturbing underlying factor of all his vaccine conspiracy theories is the suggestion that a dead child—vaccines save a lot of lives—is better than an autistic or chronically ill one, conditions he claims vaccines cause.
Measles, Mumps, and Rubella
In a 2005 Rolling Stone article, RFK Jr. suggests that a rise in childhood vaccines was tied to an increase in kids being diagnosed with autism.
Before 1989, American preschoolers received 11 vaccinations—for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade. As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded.
RFK Jr. was not the first person to suggest a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Andrew Wakefield’s retractedLancet study linking the two, which was total nonsense, should take a lot of the blame. But RFK Jr. still promoted the conspiracy theory that the measles vaccine was linked to autism in a 2021 Fox News interview, and in his 2023 co-written book Vax Unvax, Kennedy also suggests that the measles vaccine is linked to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (and Haemophilus Influenzae B)
In the same Rolling Stone piece, RFK Jr. essentially claimed that Americans had been poisoning their kids with vaccines that contained thimerosal, which is no longer in routine childhood vaccines, except some versions of the flu vaccine.
Tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The FDA says that the thimerosal in vaccines has “significantly declined due to reformulation and development of new vaccines—not that the tiny amount of it in vaccines was linked to autism or other health issues. Kennedy also claimed that receiving multiple DTP vaccines raised infant mortality (the 2004 study which Kennedy and Brian Hooker, his cowriter, cite has not been replicated).
Hepatitis B
In a 2017 interview with Stat News, RFK Jr. said that the Hepatitis B vaccine hadn’t received enough testing. He seemed to find a new argument as to why the treatment wasn’t when thimerosal was removed:
The hepatitis B vaccines that are currently approved had fewer than five days of safety testing. That means that if the child has a seizure on the sixth day, it’s never seen.
Back to the infamous 2005 Rolling Stone piece: RFK Jr. seems to suggest that people should not trust the rotavirus vaccine because of financial conflicts of interest in its advocacy.
The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine “had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.” Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he “would make money” if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist’s direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. “It provides no conflict for me,” he insists. “I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it.”
In a 2023 Substack post, Paul Offit, the doctor RFK Jr. referred to in that excerpt, debunked both Kennedy’s claims about himself, and the shoddy science he relied on.
Polio
Type I diabetes is a serious illness—one that Kennedy stokes fears of in his book Vax Unvax. The book claims that Type I diabetes appears in about 21 of 100,000 kids vaccinated against polio, more than double the rate for those who were not vaccinated, according to research performed between 1990 and 2000. Kennedy and Hooker cite a single study to support their claim that the typical polio vaccine given until the year 2000 was dangerous. But most other research refutes this claim. Vax Unvax claims to want to “let the science speak,” per its subtitle, but doesn’t mention how polio can lead to permanent paralysis.
Influenza
As you can probably tell by now, Kennedy likes picking single studies to back his narrative. In Vax Unvax, Kennedy and Hooker point to one study that claims that kids who have gotten the seasonal flu vaccine are almost four times more likely to be hospitalized.
Kennedy’s strategy on childhood vaccines is to instill fear backed by lone studies, claiming they can make kids sicker, in opposition to decades of research that show that childhood vaccines stop kids from getting sicker—and let them avoidpreventable long-term health effects.
“Don’t you want a president who’s going to make America healthy again?” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked a roaring crowd, during Sunday’s triumphal rally in support of Trump at Madison Square Garden.
When Kennedy, the country’s most famous anti-vaccine activist, suspended his campaign to endorse Donald Trump, it not only represented the death of his presidential aspirations, but the dawn of something new: the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a tidy bit of sloganeering designed to highlight where Trump and Kennedy’s agendas overlap.
“How can you claim this is going to make people healthy?”
The concept is meant to convince skeptical Kennedy supporters to back Trump. But so far it’s mainly illustrated the various ways Kennedy is on board with Trump’s radical deregulation agenda, which would see the agencies responsible for policing food, environmental and medication safety defunded.
There are signs that another Trump administration will be even worse for public health: Project 2025, an agenda for his second administration prepared by his allies, calls for the CDC to be broken up, slamming it as “perhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government.” It also demonizes the National Institutes of Health, claiming the agency has an “incestuous relationship” with vaccine manufacturers and is in the grip of “woke gender ideology.”
Despite his governing record, Trump has adopted some MAHA talking points, promising to end the “chronic illness epidemic” in America, which, like Kennedy, he has previously blamed partly on vaccines. Trump, who already installed Kennedy on his presidential transition team, also publicly promised to put him on a panel to study what he called “the decades-long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more.”
The main overlap between Trump and Kennedy—and the driving force behind the MAHA movement—is a their shared conviction that the institutions responsible for policing the safety of food and drugs should be defunded and their employees investigated and possibly jailed.
On Monday, Kennedy told a group of MAHA supporters that Trump had “promised me…control of the public health agencies,” including HHS, the CDC, FDA, NIH, USDA, “and a few others.” Kennedy recently tweeted that the FDA’s “war on public health is about to end” under a new Trump administration, before listing an array that encompassed pseudoscientific practices and products: “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” He added, “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
At the Madison Square Garden rally, Kennedy accused Democrats of “giving us the sickest children in the world,” called the chronic disease crisis “existential for our country,” and said he was focused on “ending the corruption” at agencies including the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA, all which he lumped in with the CIA as being in dire need of top-to-bottom reform.
According to researcher and author Matthew Remski, Kennedy’s recent appearances have seen him deemphasize attacks on vaccines to instead focus on a much broader set of purported issues around health.
“It’s probably the most successful rebrand that he’s managed since his anti-vax turn back in 2005,” says Remski, a co-host of Conspirituality, a podcast examining the alignment between New Age and right wing spheres. “MAHA represents his organizational capacity to bring the full spectrum of anti-vax-adjacent issues and concerns and grievances together under one umbrella.”
And could be a profitable one. The brand has given rise to the MAHA Alliance—a new conservative super PAC led by Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine personality and Kennedy’s former campaign communications director. Bigtree says the group has already raised nearly $8 million, including a recent $3 million donation from Elon Musk.
Kennedy’s new role in GOP politics has opened doors to him and those in his circles—including some with a track record of promoting harmful or scientifically unsupported health claims. In September, Kennedy and a number of close allies and MAHA boosters took part in a Capitol Hill event on nutrition hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), a longtime friend of the anti-vaccine movement. Billed as “a nonpartisan panel discussion about the industries that impact national health,” in his opening remarks, Kennedy accused the FDA, the USDA, and the CDC of being “sock puppets for the industry they’re supposed to regulate.”
Other panelists included Calley Means, a self-styled “healthcare reform” advocate who had been involved in Kennedy’s campaign, men’s rights activist and pop psychologist Jordan Peterson (as well as his daughter Mikhaila, who promotes an all-meat regimen she’s dubbed “the Lion Diet”), and Vani Hari, a wellness influencer who uses the moniker Food Babe, who’s previously been accused of making unscientific claims in her quest to pressure food makers to drop certain ingredients.
Given “his distorted views,” Kennedy makes a poor figurehead for a movement purportedly centered on health.
During her panel remarks, Hari pushed a new campaign against Kellogg’s cereals’ use of food dyes as part of a larger agenda against foods with “synthetic preservatives and pesticides.” The science demonstrating danger from the synthetic food dyes Kellogg’s uses in the U.S. is far from settled; according to a 2014 NPR profile, a previous campaign Hari mounted against supposedly-questionable beer additives actually targeted products derived from algae and fish.
Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist who combats health misinformation, told Mother Jones the panel gave participants like Hari “a huge megaphone.” Love has pointed out that some of the Kellogg’s ingredients that Hari has claimed are “banned” in other countries legally appear there under different names. When Love later criticized a video actress Eva Mendes made praising Hari’s campaign and calling Kellogg’s dyes “harmful for children,” Calley Means baselessly accused Love of “advertising for Monsanto.” Peterson called her “a liar” as well as “incompetent, deceitful, resentful and arrogant.”
Danielle Shine—an Australian registered dietitian and nutritionist who studies nutrition misinformation also drew fire from Means and Peterson after commenting on Mendes’ video—says Kennedy makes a poor figurehead for a movement purportedly centered on health, given “his distorted views.”
“It’s perplexing that someone who seems to lack an understanding of basic science and promotes misinformation about vaccinations, food, and health would be positioned to lead a public health initiative,” she says. “His rhetoric repeatedly demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of food and nutrition science.”
Kennedy’s demonization of public health agencies, as he foregrounds influencerswho make unsubstantiated claims about science and health, illustrates, Love argues, that the efforts of the so-called Make America Healthy Again circle are entirely misdirected.
“They’re pushing towards an ecosystem where there’s less protection, safety, oversight and regulation,” she says. “They’re not talking about the things that do matter, like getting more Americans insured… They say they’re going to take on a company like Kellogg’s, an entity that has no impact on health outcomes, while also pushing to take all authority, oversight, and funding away from federal entities who do that.”
“How,” she adds, with a measure of disbelief, “can you claim this is going to make people healthy?”
On Sunday afternoon, when Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, comedian and podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe opened the big show with a string of racist jokes. He referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” made a crude remark about Latinos and sex, and joked about carving watermelons with a Black person for Halloween. Some in the packed arena laughed. It was the start of hours of MAGA extremism that included a speaker who called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and one who described Harris’ advisers as “pimp handlers.” The shindig culminated in one of Trump’s most inflammatory speeches.
Throughout the hours-long program, no one on the line-up—including Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump, Dr. Phil, and Tucker Carlson—called out Hinchcliffe.
Nor did Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When it was his turn on the stage, the former Democrat, who this year ran an unsuccessful independent campaign for president, praised Trump to the hilt, claiming that Trump, if elected, would “restore the moral authority” of the United States, “protect” the Constitution and free speech, and “rebuild the middle class.” He also proclaimed that Trump would “stop dividing this country along racial lines.”
Kennedy’s silence about Hinchcliffe’s foul racism was more significant than that of his fellow Trumpers, for he once had a strong bond with Puerto Rico.
In 2001, he was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison for trespassing as a participant in a series of protests that aimed to stop the US Navy bombing exercises on Vieques island. The protesters contended the bombing was damaging the island’s environment and harming its 9,100 residents. The arrested demonstrators included actor Edward James Olmos, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Kennedy ended up serving a short stint in prison. He was so emotionally invested in this protest that he gave the middle name Vieques to one of his children.
So what did Kennedy make of Hinchcliffe’s racist gags?
On Monday morning, I reached Kennedy on his cell phone and asked why he hadn’t said anything at the rally about those comments. Kennedy requested we go off the record. Really? He would have to go off the record to discuss this? I replied that I preferred for this conversation to be on the record. He assented and said, “I was unaware of Tony Hinchcliffe’s, uh, uh, statement when I spoke or I would have addressed it.” He stopped talking, as if that was enough of a response.
“Well, what do you think of it now?” I asked.
“I think it was unfortunate,” he said. He paused and then added, “And that’s all I’ve got to say.”
Merely unfortunate? Nothing stronger?
I tried to press Kennedy for more, but he hung up.
His response was far weaker than the statement the Trump campaign had issued when it realized Hinchcliffe’s disastrous performance had tainted Trump’s campaign finale: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Other Republicans were more outspoken. Florida Sen. Rick Scott tweeted, “This joke bombed for a reason. It’s not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans!” Recently imprisoned Trump adviser Peter Navarro called Hinchcliffe “the biggest, stupidest asshole that ever came down the comedy pike.”
Hinchcliffe’s comments quickly drew harsh criticism from the Harris campaign, and, at the same time, prominent Puerto Ricans, including Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin expressed their support for Harris. Within hours of Hinchcliffe’s Madison Square Garden appearance, Harris’ team released a video and social media posts assailing his racist cracks and promoting the veep’s plans for Puerto Rico.
In a 1963 speech as attorney general, Robert Kennedy, declared that one of the “overriding moral drives” of the nation was to combat racism and “to do everything possible to eliminate racial discrimination.” And during his speech at the Trump event, RFK Jr. hailed his father and his uncle, President John Kennedy, for having led a party that was committed to civil rights. Yet by hooking up with Trump, who has a long record of racism, Kennedy has not lived up to that standard his father called for. (He has also promoted racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.) His unwillingness to sharply criticize the brazen racism present at the Trump rally where he was a headliner suggests Kennedy is a politician driven more by opportunism than his family’s legacy.
At a Sunday campaign rally, former President Donald Trump promised, if re-elected, to let anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “go wild on health.” Kennedy has previously signaled his desire to join a second Trump administration, after dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump—who himself has wild ideas about health—in August.
Trump tonight on RFK Jr:
“I'm gonna let him go wild on health. I'm gonna let him go wild on the food. I'm gonna let him go wild on the medicines." pic.twitter.com/tBVXrou1YQ
Trump’s pledge alarmed public health professionals, including Dr. Jerome Adams, his own surgeon general. Unlike many other top officials appointed by Trump, Adams was actually qualified: he was praised by colleagues for successfully limiting an HIV outbreak in Indiana by establishing a needle exchange program, among other public health successes.
On Monday, Adams spoke at a conference of the American Public Health Association—which endorsed his 2017 nomination as Surgeon General—on his concerns about Kennedy, especially his anti-vaccine stances, as New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote on X.
Trump's surgeon general, @JeromeAdamsMD warns RFK would hurt America's health:
"If RFK has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people's willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines, and I am worried about the impact that…
Adams has been a strong supporter of the development and distribution of Covid vaccines, and others, including by testifying at a 2021 House hearing on how to encourage Covid vaccine uptake. Kennedy, on the other hand, has promoted the debunked, dangerous theory that vaccines cause autism. It definitely does not—but polio and measles do cause people to develop disabilities.
As my colleague David Corn wrote for Mother Jones in July, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism could potentially be linked to the deaths of children in Samoa who contracted measles. (Kennedy denied fault.)
During the stretch in which the vaccination coverage was dropping in Samoa, Kennedy visited the nation in June 2019 and gave a boost to anti-vaxxers there who had used the death of those two infants to help cause the drop in vaccination rates…Public health experts complained Kennedy’s visit to Samoa helped amplifly anti-vax voices.
During his speech, Adams also directly appealed to Republicans, asking them to not play a role in “allowing vaccine confidence to continue to be eroded, and for us to go backwards on one of the number-one public health achievements made in the last 50 to 75 years in this country.”
In 2020, as for so many people, things shifted for Jessica Reed Kraus. A Southern California–based lifestyle blogger who got her start writing about motherhood, Kraus felt dubious about Covid safety measures and vaccines, and disaffected from mainstream liberal politics.
With her photogenic world upended, she wanted to talk about natural immunity and her objection to “vax cards,” she later wrote, and how they would “eliminate portions of society from general aspects of life.” When she did, she wrote that she was branded “an anti-vax Qanon nutjob which made me overly defensive.”
Kraus has a million Instagram followers, and her Substack is top-ranked in the platform’s culture category.
The pandemic ushered in a new focus, a transition from posts about decorating her gorgeous Southern California home—once featured on Martha Stewart’s Instagram—and her Etsy business helping others make similarly tasteful purchases; the most popular items were canvas teepees for children. Instead, she grew both increasingly conspiratorial and, at the same time, more invested in carving out a niche where celebrity gossip met hard news. It “proved,” she has written on Instagram, “an accidental hit.”
Today, Kraus has a million followers on Instagram, and her Substack, House Inhabit, is top-ranked in the platform’s culture category, with some 380,000 subscribers, many of whom pay $7 a month for her paywalled posts. (By the Wall Street Journal’s estimate, the site pulls in more than $1 million annually.) Over the the last year, she’s given more attention to a new set of boldface names, becoming a fixture in both the Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. universes, providing unstinting positive coverage of both men that she depicts as free from mainstream media bias.
During his now-suspended campaign and into his current Trump-surrogate phase, Kraus has provided a glossy view of Kennedy, depicting him as a handsome, breezy scion of his famous family. “My campaign coverage has provided a rare source of balanced insight,” she writes, “presenting an authentic interpretation of Kennedy and his messaging amid a storm of recycled, slanderous articles.” After she accompanied Kennedy, family members, and actress Alicia Silverstone on a hike, she described being allowed to linger in his office while he hurried off to a campaign event in ecstatic terms: “My dreams are manifesting now as reality,” she wrote. In this Polo catalogue vision, she also manages to brush off some of his strangest moments; in response to the revelation he’d once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, she noted that someone DMed her that it made them “like him more.”
“Maybe the series of strange scandals is working for him?” she wrote, rather hopefully.
Kraus’ depiction of Trump has been statesmanlike; she’s called him “a showstopper” and depicted him as a mesmerizing speaker whose supporters have been unfairly tarnished by the mainstream media for their abiding and patriotic love for him. Her Substack posts from the Republicans’ convention were as schmaltzy as they were high-flown, depicting a normal political gathering as a battle for the soul of a nation. “With every story and tear shed, it became clear that this was not just another convention,” she wrote. “It was a watershed moment, a fierce reclamation of a vision for America that many felt had been slipping away.”
This intense rhetoric—good versus evil, manful heroes facing off against the abyss of the Deep State—helps Kraus inject drama and glamour. “I kind of love the new challenge of making politics engaging again,” she told a Wall Street Journal interviewer.
But to see Kraus’ career as a tidy narrative—mommy blogger to political quasi-journalist—would elide the notably weird flavor of her politics and beliefs. Despite her protests about being called a “Qanon nutjob,” for years Kraus has been obsessed with Pizzagate-ish ideas about occult rituals among Hollywood celebrities, making claims that Travis Scott’s 2021 Astroworld festival, where 10 people died in a concert stampede, was literally a demonic ritual. She and her occasional Substack co-author, Emilie Hagen, have hosted and platformed the work of New Age conspiracy Instagrammer Jennifer Carmody, who has claimed that celebrities like Elvis were victims of CIA mind control. She’s reposted comments by far-right conspiracist Liz Crokin asserting that “Israel can’t have the truth about Pizzagate coming out.” Whatever the most eyeball-grabbing news of the day—Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, Diddy’s arrest—she’ll spin the event as a forerunner to a promised post that will blow the lid off a sprawling sexual abuse scandal.
Throughout Kennedy’s run, Kraus left it ambiguous about whether she was there as an affiliate of the campaign.
Kraus’ oeuvre is a window into a world of exceedingly rich and privileged women enmeshed in conspiracy theories, especially those involving allegations of elite occult sexual abuse. Her celebrity coverage, combined with the aspirational lifestyle she presents, has helped her amass a large, devoted, and heavily female fanbase, who seem to want to emulate her and other wealthy women in her circles. Last summer, I spoke to one Kraus fan, an exceedingly polished and fit mom of teenage children, for hours at a tony Oregon hot spring spa, who struck up a hot tub conversation by asking what I knew about aliens and told me House Inhabit was the only media source she trusted. Kraus appears to be friendly on social media with Lady Victoria Hervey, an English model and socialite (and former girlfriend of Prince Andrew) who now posts Instagram musings about “Hollywood’s dark Satanic cults” and “plandemics,” both posts that Kraus has liked. (Hervey responded to a request for comment by writing, “Let me check with Jessica on this.” She didn’t reply to follow-up messages.)
Throughout Kennedy’s campaign, Kraus took on the role of an observer-participant, leaving it ambiguous about whether she was there as an affiliate of the campaign or on her own. This week, Kraus denied “being paid by a campaign,” as she put it on Instagram, while disclosing that American Values 2024, a PAC promoting Kennedy, had “offered me a hotel room” during the Democratic National Convention and threw her a pizza and wine party while there. Hours later, she said that was incorrect, and that she’d paid for her own hotel but that American Values spent $1,140 on merch from her site: hats reading “Make Speech Free Again” for supporters to wear around the convention.
Kennedy’s political team, which did not respond to a request for comment, has been happy to reward and promote her positive coverage, making her the moderator of a September 12 conversation between Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard in Arizona. His campaign even auctioned off a Zoom conversation with her during a fundraiser. (It went for $500.) She was also briefly named as the “director of social media” for a fizzled birthday party fundraiser that would have been hosted by another Kennedy-backing super-PAC. Her efforts to get close to the Trump campaign haven’t been as successful, though there have been some inroads: In August, Donald Trump Jr. showed up at a backyard meetup for Kraus’ followers in Jupiter, Florida. “Sitting fireside, in front of a group of strangers, he shared funny stories about his father,” Kraus wrote on Instagram.
After Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed the former president, she posted a photo to Instagram of the two men sharing a stage. “You know I fought hard for this,” she wrote, adding a weeping emoji and telling her readers the endorsement was “significant and deeply emotional, built of Shakespearean bones.”
Since then, she’s filmed herself backstage at several Trump campaign events, standing next to personalities who have endorsed the former president, like Roseanne Barr. She also shows signs of becoming a more regular feature in Republican circles, especially Kennedy-adjacent ones: she was spotted at a DC book party in May for Gabbard. She also posted a beaming photo of herself backstage at one of Tucker Carlson’s recent live events, wedged into frame with him and conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones.
Spokesperson Steven Cheung did not respond to emails asking about Kraus’ access or role with Trump’s campaign. And Kraus herself, after initially agreeing to speak but twice canceling by citing lunch dates that ran long, ultimately declined my interview requests. “I sense the angle. And I’m just too busy with everything springing up without warning,” she wrote, adding that she was about to catch a flight to a Trump event. She also declined to respond to emailed questions.
Kraus was raised in Corona, a midsize town at the intersection of two freeways in Riverside County. As a child, she has written on Instagram, “I adored all the top 90s gossip columnists. I could not think of a more fabulous existence.” She’s said that her father died by suicide when she was 6, and that she experienced a period of “elective mutism” in the aftermath. The Journal piece also noted that she is estranged from her mother.
After becoming pregnant with her first child in 2005 with her then-boyfriend, Mike, Kraus got her start in the public eye with a carefully curated, Goop-esque form of lifestyle blogging and ruminations about motherhood. (The couple later married and now have four boys in all.) Early posts, where she went by the name Mrs. Habit, tend to fall flat; you can feel her boredom with the genre and its limitations leaking through the screen. “I know I’ve had a really tough time keeping up on posts,” she admitted in a 2011 update.
In 2014, while pregnant with her youngest, Kraus launched The Ma Books, a literary-minded blog which billed itself as an “online haven for women with brains and a budget.” It was born, she has written, out of a disgust with overly curated mommy blogs. “They want you to believe they do it all, and much better and more fashionable than you too,” she wrote. But despite any suggestion it might counterprogram the space’s typically too-polished images, visually, it was quite similar: a beautiful and more upscale vision of motherhood than what Kraus saw from other mommy chroniclers on Blogger.
In 2016, Kraus backed Hillary Clinton on Instagram and created a hashtag for women to flaunt voting day outfits.
The Ma Books continued until 2019, as Kraus grew her personal Instagram, sharing photos of her husband’s extensive DIY renovations, her family’s travels, and wistful photos of her children playing on the beach, surfing, and getting ready for camp, often laid over with sepia-tinted filters. As an Instagram influencer, she was modestly successful, and the family got plenty of approving write-ups in magazines and lifestyle and design blogs, as Kraus described herself as a “stay at home mom” who did a little writing on the side. While there was some mild and anodyne Democratic-leaning political content—in 2016, Ma Books posted a Hillary Clinton endorsement on Instagram, and created a hashtag for its readers to flaunt the stylish outfits they wore to the polls—what she churned out felt tuned to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of women online.
All of that changed with Covid, and Kraus’ newly out-loud viewpoints. “My income, at that point, depended on the sellable nature of my ‘brand,’ which was liberal-leaning & sans controversy,” she wrote on Instagram last year, reflecting on that time. “During the lockdown, though, I grew bitter and resentful over my own silent surrender and increasing censorship online. We couldn’t question anything.”
“This is how the pop culture stories started—as a way to house my passion for truth in a volatile online environment, without sacrificing my beliefs,” she wrote. Kraus has said she fell under the spell of 2021’s Maxwell trial, watching obsessively from home until Mike suggested she simply go to New York and see it herself. In her coverage from the courtroom, Kraus developed what seems to be a queasy kind of sympathy for Maxwell—describing her “uncomfortable magnetism” and “electric presence,” as she depicted Jeffrey Epstein’s enabler as taking the fall for more powerful male abusers.
During the 2022 defamation trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, New York’s Choire Sicha wrote about how influencers—Kraus first among them—were, to Depp’s benefit, “shaping the general public’s understanding” far more than many mainstream reporters. Kraus, he wrote, became “a trial-obsessed Instagrammer” and “a chief instigator of the anti-Heard story line.” While covering the proceedings, she also became a minor character, reporting that she spoke to Depp by phone in advance of the proceedings, a conversation in which he denounced the failings of the mainstream media. When her Instagram account was suspended during the trial, she intimated a conspiracy: “The whole thing feels very calculated. I feel like I’m siting here with my hands tied, paying a hefty price for seeking truth.” (The account was quickly restored.)
“Completely false. I have never even heard that.”
There have only been a few moments that Kraus doesn’t seem proud of. For one, she has deleted her Astroworld claims. While Catherine, the Princess of Wales, was being treated for an undisclosed illness, she claimed to have spoken to “an individual connected to hospital staff.” She deleted that phrase, replacing it with the more ambiguous “an individual connected to recovery.” (She also claimed that the princess had had bowel surgery and was wearing a temporary stoma bag; royal spokespeople have said she had abdominal surgery and chemotherapy for an undisclosed form of cancer.) Other, wilder stories remain on her platforms, like one purporting Amber Heard presided over sex parties with “Satanic themes” and “lesbian orgies.” She wrote that Elon Musk not only attended, but is also the father of Heard’s young daughter. Kraus later wrote on Instagram that Elon Musk and Amber Heard had teamed up to file a potential lawsuit against her. “Completely false,” says Heard attorney Elaine Bredehoft. “I have never even heard that.”
Kraus also made false claims about an actual journalist during Depp and Heard’s trial, saying that NBC reporter Kat Tenbarge was working for Heard’s legal team. “Any idiot would know that is not true,” Tenbarge wrote on Twitter recently, “and I reached out to her and told her it wasn’t, and she blocked me.”
Kraus is fascinated by legacies, famous people, and power. She’s written at length on Maxwell’s tony upbringing and the royal family, and is clearly more than a little attracted by what the Kennedys represent. A key part of her appeal to readers are claims to have inside sources and tipsters close to the nerve centers of politics and entertainment alike.
But as Kraus continues her particular blend of access journalism and campaign boosterism, some close to Kennedy and Trump describe her as little short of a political social-climber. “Donald has no clue who the fuck she is,” one person familiar with the situation told me. As for Kennedy, the same person added, “She’s saying she’s a friend of Kennedy’s. She’s not. She doesn’t know any of Kennedys’ friends. She’s just been stalking him all over.” Indeed, Kraus told more than one person that she temporarily lost her Kennedy campaign access after an argument of some kind with one of his children.
On September 13, Kraus published a fawning Q&A with Olivia Nuzzi, which seemed calibrated to showcase her closeness to New York magazine’s star political correspondent. Kraus described how they had developed a “valued friendship,” dubbing her an “inspirational force” and “the last of the real ones.”
But a little more than a week later, shortly after Nuzzi was reported to have exchanged “personal” text messages with Kennedy—later reported to have included intimate photos—Kraus made an abrupt pivot. “As I reflect, my overall take is that I was a pawn,” Kraus wrote in a new post that assailed Nuzzi as an amoral fake and seductress, reflecting on how she was taken by a “phony connection.” Notably, it also quoted Gavin de Becker, Kennedy’s “security expert,” claiming that Kennedy planed to file “civil litigation” as well as make “potential criminal referrals” against Nuzzi. De Becker claimed to Kraus that Kennedy was hounded by Nuzzi sending him nudes, saying, “This had nothing to do with romance. He was being chased by porn.” These Kraus-reported remarks were widely repeated in the mainstream press—without much context about the media figure who relayed them or her relationship with the campaign.
A second Trump White House could see Kraus take up a perch at Mar-a-Lago.
Nuzzi claimed in court in the process of obtaining a protection order against her ex-fiance, Politico journalist Ryan Lizza, that he shared information about her communications with Kennedy with the news media to hurt her. Nuzzi—who, like many people in journalism, I’ve been casually friendly with for years—declined to comment. Kraus has announced plans to mine 10 months of text messages between herself and Nuzzi to write about Nuzzi’s relationship with Lizza, and make the story available first to paid subscribers.
Whatever Kraus feels about Nuzzi, she seemed furious with Kennedy over his part in the relationship. After the New York Times reported that Kennedy knocked down conversations this summer about becoming Trump’s running mate—Kennedy has said that his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, was uncomfortable with him even endorsing Trump—Kraus complained on Instagram that he was willing to “risk [his] marriage for big boned Olivia Nuzzi” but not for the VP slot “to save America.” She followed up with a series of other cryptic messages, including, “JOHNNY DEPP TRIAL ENERGY RISING AGAIN,” and, more ominously, “I’M DONE BEING NICE.”
The posts seem to illustrate the dangers of keeping a gossip influencer close enough that she might feel personally wounded by campaign decisions. But any estrangement didn’t seem to last long: In early October, Kraus Instagrammed herself aboard a yachtwith Kennedy and a handful of other supporters, including Sopranos actress Drea de Matteo. (“Am I the only one wondering if it’s awkward?” a commenter wrote, seemingly referring to Kraus’ apparent anger over Kennedy and Nuzzi.) Soon after, Kraus jetted to Trump’s marquee rally in Butler, the site of July’s assassination attempt, where she provided rapturous play-by-play coverage from somewhere extremely close to the stage.
What Kraus is doing here—a sometimes queasy blend of journalism and fluffery—is certainly not new. Conspiracy influencers cosplaying as journalists have been a regular feature of the last few election cycles. Men’s rights activist, Pizzagate promoter, and all-purpose alt-right troll Mike Cernovich began pivoting to a form of hyper-partisan journalism during the Trump administration, with posts that suggested sourcing in the White House and on the National Security Council. Jack Posobiec, who could be described using many of the same terms as Cernovich, also got a White House press pass. Far-right figure and Trump-confidant Laura Loomer wields similar tools and affects, traipsing with cameras in tow to migrant camps and promising up inside knowledge.
There’s some overlap between Kraus and this earlier generation. “In addition to riveting insight about dirty secrets and filthy politicians,” Kraus has written of Loomer, “she is funny and fearless in her approach and comes stocked with receipts to back her theories and conspiracies.” The two met for lunch to discuss a conspiracy theory that Taylor Swift has been “activated by the left” and may have “made a deal with George and Alex Soros to regain the rights to her music in exchange for getting fans registered to vote Democrat,” as Kraus wrote. Loomer has not presented any compelling evidence to this effect.
But campaign season only goes so long, which raises the question of what Kraus will do next. She clearly has ambitions to extend her brand, recently placing an enormous billboard promoting her site on Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard. In the event of a second Trump White House, you could see her taking up a perch at Mar-a-Lago. But even if he wins, she could end up on the margins, chasing celebrity gossip and Satanic shadows.
“She thinks it will go on and on and on,” her detractor, who’s familiar with the Trump world, said dismissively. “No. After the election, it’s over and bloggers like her are invited nowhere.”
For most Americans, the start of Donald Trump’s presidential career can be traced to those golden escalators, a 2015 Trump Tower spectacle that previewed much of the racism, lying, and vitriol that would come to define the political era ahead.
It was a campaign kickoff unlike anything that had been witnessed before, still referenced today to deride Trump’s ugly beginnings. “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” former President Barack Obama said in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But what if you were 9 when that happened? What if incessant presidential whining was not only familiar, but perhaps all you’ve seen about America’s political landscape? What if, contrary to the popular slogan of 2016, this is normal?
For first-time voters in the 2024 election—11 by the time the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, rattled the country—that’s overwhelmingly the case. Yet, for all the familiarity with the politically absurd, it’s precisely this group’s relative youth during some of the most shocking and surreal moments of Trump’s first term that lends itself to the natural question: What parts struck a preteen at the time? Did the terms that rattled in adult brains for years—covfefe, Robert Mueller, Sharpie-gate, deep state—mean anything to a Trump-era kid?
Because a large chunk of my paycheck is earned by paying close attention to these shitstorm news cycles, I was curious what someone whose brain was developing instead of melting made of the 45th president’s time in office.
Put simply: What does an average teen think, remember, and make of Trump? And what would their knowledge, or lack of it, reveal about what the typical adult might miss about the last decade?
We caught up with three teen voters to find out what it means to grow up in the Trump era:
Eve, 18, Hawaii
In a few words, give me a sense of what you know about Donald Trump and how you, as a first-time voter, perceive him.
I was in the fifth grade when the 2016 election happened. I remember our teachers talking to us about the election, usually adding that it was a controversial topic, but none of us really understood why. My teachers would ask us questions like: “How do you feel about this? How do you feel about that?” But I felt like many of those conversations were a copy-and-paste job of what most of our parents were saying at the time.
I’d wonder, “Why did we freak out so much about that if I still go to school, I still do whatever?” I was too young to really see the changes and the effects of it.
For a long time, my political views—if I even had any as a kid—were based on my parents. I wanted to believe the opposite of what they believed. My dad is a Republican; he voted for Trump and will probably do so again this year.
That was a very confusing thing for me, because I would see crazy things about Trump supporters online. But as a kid, I’d look at my dad and know that he was such a nice person.
Like, I love my dad; I’m having dinner with him right now, and he’s, you know, a pretty kind guy. That was pretty confusing. My mom is pretty moderate and wanted to vote for [Robert F. Kennedy] Jr. this election.
How do you think she’ll vote now that RFK Jr. is out of the race?
I think she is going to vote for Trump. I’m pretty upset that Kennedy is out because I wanted to vote for him. I literally have a shirt that says, “Surfers for Kennedy,” on it. I was so excited to vote for someone who wasn’t Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. But now that he’s dropped out, I’m going to vote for Kamala.
Growing up in the age of Trump, how did adults around you speak of the former president?
It depended on where I was at the time. For example, if I went and hung out with my Aunt Jamie and Uncle C.J. in LA for the day, I would hear a very different perspective from what I had normally been around: the Megyn Kelly Show, Dan Bongino, super right-wing podcasts that my parents would listen to.
And then I would hang out with my aunt and uncle, and then they’d be like, those people are crazy. It opened my horizons a lot. My Aunt Jamie and Uncle C.J. have since shaped a lot of my political opinions now because they’re very good at talking to my family about politics without making it into a huge argument.
Now being in Hawaii, that’s also shaped my views a bit. I wouldn’t call Hawaiians anti-America, but you hear a lot of “I’m not voting in this election. I don’t care what happens on the mainland.”
As a kid, what was your typical reaction to this discourse?
It was crazy. It was so confusing. Everyone was talking about how things would be really bad if Trump won or how things would be really bad if Hillary (Clinton) won. I didn’t understand how someone who hadn’t even won yet could have so much influence on what was going on.
But once Trump did win, I saw no difference in my life. At the time, I was a kid growing up in Malibu, [California;] I had a pretty privileged life, right? I saw no difference in anything. And I’d wonder, “Why did we freak out so much about that if I still go to school, I still do whatever?” I was too young to really see the changes and the effects of it.
The only difference I noticed was that people were posting way more on social media.
What were some of your first memories of Trump’s White House?
This is going to be very niche, but when I was in fifth grade, I watched a lot of BuzzFeed videos. And I remember there was this one under their subcategory Ladylike that featured women wearing suits every day for a week. It was some kind of empowerment challenge. I had no clue it was going to feature anything on the election. But I’m watching it and halfway through the video, Trump wins the election at the time, and they did a whole section of these women crying.
I still remember sitting on my bed watching that and being like, “Oh, this might be bad. Like, if all these girls I watch all the time are upset, this might be bad.”
Did you know that Trump was impeached twice?
No, I didn’t know he was twice impeached, but I knew he was impeached. I’d heard about it.
“This is not normal” was a popular phrase during the 2016 election. I’m just curious: If you could choose to live in that supposedly pre-Trump era, do you think you’d want to?
That’s a good question. Honestly, I think anything before Trump would be pretty similar to now. At the end of the day, it’s still a question of whether you’re going to vote Republican or Democratic. There’s typically no real third-party choice. That’s how I kind of feel about this election. Like, I’m definitely going to vote for Kamala, but I’m not necessarily doing a ton of research on her, nor am I going to buy her merch or anything. I just know that it’s a situation where I definitely don’t want Trump to win.
When olds talk about a time in politics before Trump and what was “good” and “decent,” do we sound ancient?
I think maybe a little naive, because what are they really referring to? The time when the president was sleeping with Monica Lewinsky?
Do you think January 6 is one of the events where most people a generation from now will remember where they were when it happened?
Wait, January 6, like the riot, or January 6, when he became president?
The storming of the Capitol.
I actually do remember exactly where I was. I was sitting on a couch watching TV and wondering, “What is going on?” I remember it so vividly, because my dad, a Trump supporter, was even so upset about it. He’s also a police officer, and he’s, like, the No. 1 rule follower ever. I think it’s something people will remember for a long time.
When someone calls Trump dangerous, what does that mean to you, as someone who grew up during the era of Trump?
As I said before, I didn’t notice anything different about Trump in my daily life because I was so young. It’s not like I was paying taxes or anything.
I mean, I wouldn’t want to be alone in a room with him. But I don’t know if I would want to be alone with any male politician.
Are you alluding to the long list of sexual assault allegations against Trump?
Yes.
Are you familiar with any of the Trump kids? And if you are, who do you identify with the most?
I would say his granddaughter who recently spoke at the [Republican National Convention]? Because she’s around my age. Or maybe Barron? He seems more like a fly-under-the-radar type of guy. I remember there was some funny rumor about how he was on Roblox, the online gaming app, but then Melania took it away from him.
Mia, 19, California
In a few words, give me a sense of what you know about Donald Trump and how you, as a first-time voter, perceive him.
I know that he is a convicted felon and he is not a good person, right? Or at least in my opinion. He has said some very blatantly racist things; he has something of a cult following.
Growing up in the age of Trump, how did adults around you speak of the former president?
Oh, my parents were very anti-Trump. It was a lot of turning on the news and they’d say things like, “Oh dang, it’s Trump again.” There was never any praise, more concern that a real leader shouldn’t be acting this way.
I think I was too young to really understand what was so dangerous about Donald Trump.
What was your typical reaction to that discourse?Cringe?
I thought it was actually interesting, and I wanted to learn more about it. Especially because my parents would insist to me that they don’t usually react so strongly. It was a good learning experience, for sure.
What were some of your first memories of Trump’s White House?
Earliest? Well, I remember watching the election between him and Hillary. I woke up the morning Trump was elected and my dad was pissed—like, he was so angry. And I remember thinking, “Oh, this is not a good environment for us.”
When olds talk about a time in politics before Trump and what was “good” and “decent,” do we sound ancient? Naive?
It’s hard to imagine. Maybe not naive, but it does sound like a simpler, more civilized time when you didn’t have to worry about voting for a felon.
We’ve been raised to have certain ideas of what a democracy should be like, rather than, like, just voting for someone who’s not a terrible person. So it’s jarring going from that to this being our first election—and you don’t really have the option to explore the two choices.
Do you think January 6 is one of the events where most people a generation from now will remember where they were when it happened?
I was at home on the couch, and my dad turned on the TV and was like, “You have to watch this.” I definitely think it’ll be remembered years on. Even today, my friends will make jokes, “Where were you on January 6?” It’s such an iconic date.
When someone calls Trump dangerous, what did that mean to you, as someone who grew up during the era of Trump?
I think I was too young to really understand what was so dangerous about Donald Trump. I had heard and known that he was a threat to women’s rights and general equality overall. But I couldn’t have told you why.
Is there anything Trump did as president that you think was good?
I don’t think I could name a single thing. I have family in Ohio who’d say different.
Are you familiar with any of the Trump kids? And if you are, who do you identify with the most?
I’m trying to remember. He has a son, right? And the daughter is older? This is so bad. I don’t know.
Miles, 19, California
In a few words, give me a sense of what you know about Donald Trump and how you, as a first-time voter, perceive him.
I mean, Donald Trump has a reputation that speaks for itself. I view him as sort of the [former NBA player] Patrick Beverley of the political world. He always seems to butt his head in and isn’t afraid to mix it up with anyone. This alone wouldn’t be that bad, except for the fact that he doesn’t have the bite to back up the bark. Historically, he’s said some pretty wild things, but almost never fully backs them up.
Growing up in the age of Trump, how did adults around you speak of the former president?
I always heard mixed words of Trump. I mostly grew up in Livermore, which is one of the most conservative cities in the [San Francisco] Bay Area, although still not the majority. Most adults I knew spoke poorly of him, but there were always the few who were very excited when he did anything.
What was your typical reaction to that discourse?Cringe?
I never liked hearing political discussions growing up, so yes, cringe is a great way to describe my reaction to people talking about him. I never liked hearing about him or anything he did.
What were some of your first memories of Trump’s White House?
I don’t really remember much, but one thing I do remember a lot of was the online reactions and memes. It was so laughable that Trump even made it to the White House that people would make edits of him.
Did you know that Trump was impeached twice?
Yes, I did know that. He is the only president to have that happen, I believe.
“This is not normal” was a popular phrase during the 2016 election. I’m just curious: If you could choose to live in that supposedly pre-Trump era, do you think you’d want to?
If we define pre-Trump as pre-2016, then no, I would not like to live in it. Those were some pretty good years regarding music and early YouTube, but having to deal with 2008 would be pretty bad as an adult, I assume. While those years were fun, what came after has been a lot better for me and more fun.
When olds talk about a time in politics before Trump and what was “good” and “decent,” do we sound ancient? Naive?
I think they’re probably right. Today, there is a much bigger social media base in campaigns and it is so much easier to spread misinformation. Obviously, politics have always been dirty, but I feel as if it’s just gotten worse since Trump has been involved.
Do you think January 6 is one of the events where most people a generation from now will remember where they were when it happened?
Absolutely. I remember I was on a Zoom call for AP World History when I heard that news. It was just so unfathomable that something like that could even happen and is a huge historical moment in Trump’s legacy.
When someone calls Trump dangerous, what did that mean to you, as someone who grew up during the era of Trump?
As a white middle-class male, I never felt Trump was dangerous directly to me. I can’t speak for others on this matter, though; I know I’m not a group he would want to target.
Is there anything Trump did as president that you think was good?
I cannot think of anything off the top of my head that Trump did exceptionally.
Are you familiar with any of the Trump kids? And if you are, who do you identify with the most?
I can’t even name any of his kids off the top of my head.
This week in an Albany, New York courtroom, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fighting a legal challenge that has the potential to sink much of his independent presidential campaign. The dispute is over where he calls home.
In a lawsuit that was engineered by Clear Choice PAC, a super PAC formed earlier this year by political allies of President Joseph Biden to combat independent candidates or third-party efforts that could threaten the Democratic ticket, several New York State voters challenged Kennedy’s position on the state’s presidential ballot, contending that he falsely stated his residence on the nominating petitions he filed to obtain ballot access. They argue that this renders his petitions invalid and that he ought to be tossed from the ballot. (The original complaint also challenged signatures on Kennedy’s petitions, but that matter has been put to the side.)
Being kicked off the Empire State’s ballot would be embarrassing for Kennedy but not likely to affect the overall presidential race. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to win the heavily Democratic state. But strategists for Clear Choice PAC say they have identified about 18 states where Kennedy is on the ballot and could be vulnerable to similar challenges if he loses the New York case. This collection of states includes most of the swing states, where Kennedy could impact the ultimate outcome by drawing votes from Harris or GOP nominee Donald Trump. (In some states, if Kennedy loses this case, he would likely be allowed to correct his filings.)
The key issue is simple and involves a private room in a one-family house in bucolic Katonah, New York.
The house is owned by the wife of an old friend of Kennedy. RFK Jr. claims this room is his official residence and has listed it on his ballot petitions in New York and in ballot filings in other states. The petitioners contend that this is a ruse and that he has been living in California for years with his wife Cheryl Hines, the actor best known for co-starring with Larry David in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Each side has submitted court filings arguing its case. In an affidavit, Kennedy insists that “at the very marrow of my being” he is a New Yorker. He notes that he is registered to vote at this Katonah address, that his car is registered there, and that he pays New York State income taxes. He adds that he maintains falconry, fishing, and hunting licenses at this address. “My life, my passions, the years I spent raising my family, my career and my political contacts, and my orientation have been and are ever in my home state of New York,” says Kennedy, who for years was an environmental lawyer who worked in the state (before becoming an antivax crusader and conspiracy theory promoter).
Kennedy acknowledges that since his 2014 marriage to Hines, he has lived with her in a series of homes in California, including houses in Malibu and a tony canyon in Brentwood. His affidavit includes a hard-to-believe claim: “My agreement with my wife, Cheryl Hines, to temporarily join her in the state of California, was that we would both return to the state of New York upon her retirement. We will return to my current residence at 84 Croton Lake Road, Katonah, New York.” The pair really will leave their luxurious $7 million Los Angeles home to reside in what Kennedy calls a “private room” in his friend’s house?
The petitioners maintain that Kennedy is pulling a fast one and that he essentially moved to California when he went LA with Hines. “Kennedy acknowledged his true residence in California when he purchased property,” their initial complaint says. It points to a letter he wrote when he resigned as an officer of Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in New York, and wrote the group, “As you know, I now live on the west coast and the weekly commute has been hard on my family to say nothing of my carbon footprint.”
The petitioners list instances when Kennedy in media interviews referred to California as his “home.” And they note that when he filed his candidacy statement with the Federal Elections Commission, he used his California address. Moreover, they point out that the Katonah home is in foreclosure, and they cite a New York Post article that reported that neighbors were unaware of Kennedy’s residence in this house and had never seen him.
There’s another wrinkle: Under the Constitution, if a presidential and vice presidential candidate are from the same state, they cannot claim that state’s Electoral College votes. It seems unlikely that Kennedy can win in California, Harris’ home state. But given that his running mate, Silicon Valley millionaire (or billionaire) Nicole Shanahan, is a Californian, RFK Jr. could encounter a problem should he surge to an improbable victory in the Golden State.
The legal filings of each side are filled with technical arguments regarding residency, and it’s tough to predict the outcome. Whichever side loses the case will likely appeal. The court proceedings are expected to end this week, and there’s already a date scheduled for an appeals court trial. With ballots soon to be printed in New York and other states, there is not much time to resolve the matter. And if Clear Choice PAC obtains the ruling it seeks, it will have to move quickly to mount challenges in other states.
On Monday, the Kennedy campaign released this statement about the case:
Independent Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will testify this week at the Albany County Supreme Court where campaign attorneys expect to prove that 1) Kennedy has had a residence in New York for decades; 2) that any attempt by New York to restrict candidates beyond the U.S. Constitutional standard of residence being the state to which you intend to return would be unconstitutional; and 3) that the nominating petition cannot be struck because Kennedy, relying on advice of counsel, in good faith listed his New York residence on his nominating petitions.
The Kennedy campaign said it is officially on the ballot in 13 states (including Michigan, Minnesota, and North Carolina), has submitted signatures in 19 states, and has collected enough signatures for ballot access in 10 other states.
The Clear Choice PAC was organized when polls suggested that RFK Jr. might draw more votes from Biden than Trump—though the picture was far from clear. More recent surveys have indicated that he now might be more a magnet for Trump-leaners than possible Harris voters. Yet Clear Choice is still rigorously pursuing the New York challenge and preparing to move forward in other states if it wins in Albany.
One strategist familiar with the PAC’s efforts notes that it may not be until late September that Kennedy’s impact on the race can be accurately estimated. But, this person adds, if the Democrats’ strategy is to consolidate the anti-Trump electorate to prevent the former president’s return to the White House, their best bet is a binary choice between Harris and Trump, with Kennedy and other independent or third-party candidates pushed to the side and considered non-factors.
One longtime Kennedy associate says that Kennedy, whose father was a senator representing New York, has never wanted to give up his ties to the state, perhaps because he might run for office there. It would be quite the turn of events if that desire caused his removal from the ballot in New York and, worse for his campaign, in other states.
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