Bulwark Takes - RFK Jr. Picks a Fight With Dunkin’—And New England Isn’t Having It

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Sam Stein, JVL, and Catherine Rampell give their takes on why HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is demanding “safety data” from Dunkin' over its sugar-loaded iced coffees and why that fight could hit differently in Massachusetts. From 115 grams of sugar to 48-ounce coffee buckets, the crew taste-tests a truly unholy Dunkin order and debates whether this is public health policy or just another front for the MAHA movement in the culture wars.

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulwark, and you're in for a treat, a glazed treat of a take. We're going to be talking about Dunkin' Donuts because our health and human service secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gone to war with New England. This is remarkable to me. Kennedy going to war with New England. He has said, according to reporting, I guess it was at this event he was at Austin, as part of his Maha initiative, that he's going to be asking, the quote is we're going to be asking Duncan Donuts and Starbucks. Quote, show us the safety data that show that it's okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it. I don't think they're going to be able to do it, end quote.

Remarkable stuff here. This could tear apart the state of Massachusetts if he's not careful. So I'm with JVL. I'm with Catherine. Two of us came with props. I can't wait to tell you what's in this thing. It is absolutely grotesque. I will get to that as a teaser in a little bit.

But JVL, you were the most eager to, you know, shoot the shit on this one. Why? What has, what, what's bothering you here? I just, you know, why, why does Robert Kennedy hate America? Is there anything more American than Dunkin' Donuts coffee? America runs on Duncan. Yeah. Some might say, Sam Stein.

Yeah. Is there anything more New England, really, than Dunkin' Donuts than Duncan Donuts? I don't know about you guys. Both of you sort of. New Englanders-ish. I'm from Connecticut. I'm New England. You know, the first time I was in Boston

and I was riding on the tea and I learned that there were platforms where you could hop off, get a Duncan, light and sweet. You just say light and sweet. They knew what you wanted. And then hop right back on the tea. I was like, this is wicked pissa.

I love this. I love this for us. And this is America. And Robert F. Kennedy wants to destroy that because is he a communist? Is he from Russia? Did we lose a war that there's going to take Dunkin' Donuts away from us, Sam? What is the acceptable, what is the acceptable sugar level for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Why does he get to decide how much junk I put in my body, right? This would not have gone over well with conservatives 10 years ago, but seems to be fine now. Catherine, what is your actual connection to Massachusetts? You live there part-time? So I live part-time in Western Mass in the Berkshire, so on the other side of the state. I know. And yes, we have plenty of Dunkeys per capita here, too. It is the lifeblood of New England, of Massachusetts.

I think if there's one thing that I've learned about Massachusetts, it's that the three most important things to people here are Duncan, the Kennedys, and the Red Sox in that order. Yeah. And so, like, I don't know what it means to have A. Kennedy going to war with the number two value, or excuse me, the number one value here, which is Duncan. Like the Boston Tea Party started here, or on the other side of the state anyway, over another kind of beverage. So I don't know how well the people of Massachusetts are going to take it.

It's like watching a giant eagle attack the Statue of Liberty. Yeah. More or less. Let me, let me read some stats for you guys about just because people would be like, oh, people who aren't from the area might be like, what are you guys talking about? All right, we can pull up the maps tier two. We can put them over here. But how many Duncans are there? Question mark. Well, it turns out there's a fair amount.

9,990 locations. This is in the country. But 1,031 of them are in Massachusetts, one for every nine. Okay. This is another stat, according to Maptitude, which I just discovered is a thing today. In Massachusetts, 5.6 million people live less than two miles. from a Dunkin. That's 80% of the population. You don't have to go very far to get a Dunkin' Donut coffee. Now, when I was growing up in Jayville, you probably feel the same way. It was a simpler time.

You could get your light and sweet, obviously, and you went to Dunkin' Donuts, mostly for donuts. But along the way, it became defined by its coffee. And there's a real cultural divide between people who like the Duncan and people who went to, like, I don't know, Starbucks, I guess would be the other alternative. But the real people went to Duncan, even though, you know, most people think it tastes like shit. I think it tastes great. I love, I love a Dunkin Donuts. A Dunkin' Donuts, coffee. Not the donuts anymore. The donuts.

I'll do the munchkins. They used to make the donuts on premises. Yes. So once upon a time, every Dunkin you went to made the donuts. This was the, they had the famous commercial with the little guy with the Hitler mustache going, Time to make the donuts. I have to make the donut. I made the donuts.

Dunkin donut. Right. And they made him fresh every morning. They were amazing. No longer because we can't have nice things in America. And shitification is our national anthem. But the coffee, quah coffee is, it's just better than Starbucks coffee. Now, Starbucks does better espresso drinks, right?

I myself, I'm an elevated gentleman who prefers espresso. I have coffee intelligentsia beans from Chicago delivered to my home. every 10 days because that's just how I roll. But if you want just a cup of Joe, you can't do better than Duncan in terms of mass market coffee. Was that your attempt at a New England accent, a Boston accent, JVL? I mean, sure. It's better than Pletus.

Go back to the Yad. Go back to the Yod, yeah. Yeah. What do we make of the Duncan commercials? Because they become a thing. Matt, Damon, and Ben Affleck are constantly in them. I don't need her. I stick at everything I need.

Right here with Duncan. Hey, kid. If you're still single doing this Boston stint and working for Duncan when you're 50, I'm going to be very disappointed. Isn't that your girlfriend? You like donuts? It's so bad. It's so bad.

I'm sorry. What year is that? What year is that? The Super Bowl this year. This is the Super Bowl at the Super Bowl. Oh, wow. Not quite as good as the Tom Brady Matt Damon and Ben Affleck commercial from, I think it was two years.

ago, which also had J-Lo in it, that was also fantastic. Yeah, there was one with Al Pacino. It was in a movie making fun of Dunkin' Donuts. What's my name? Dunkin'Ochino. It's a whole new game. Dunkin'Otcino. Duncan Doeus has introduced a couple different, truly insane drinks.

And I know, Catherine, you're on the lookout for one. But can you talk a bit about this 48-ounce bucket and then the fragrance? I was unaware that this old Dunkin'Framing. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, so Dunkin' Donuts has introduced a 48-ounce bucket. I think that is what they refer to it as of coffee, to be clear. Not soup or something else that might make more sense in a quantity of that size.

And they're rolling it out, I think, in only select locations in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire right now. So it's not available yet. I checked. I really wanted that as a prop today instead of... What the fuck would you do with 48? ounces of this. I don't go swimming in it. I'm not really good.

Have a heart attack. Did you ever see that episode of Parks and Rec where they talked about the enormous sizes of beverages? No? No. There's what, where they refer to a very large size that's about that size as a child size because it is approximately the size of a two-year-old child. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. What about the fragrances, though? Can you talk about that? Because that kind of intrigues me. Yeah, there was a partnership a couple of years ago where they were selling Duncan scented deodorant, I think it was. Duncan scented deodorant and like maybe shaving cream and shampoo. And it kind of brings to mind that scene from Jurassic Park where he says, you know, your scientists were so obsessed with whether they could. They never considered whether they should.

And I don't know. I've never tried these Duncan scented things. I don't know if you smell like a donut or a coffee or that weird smell of the inside of a Dunkin Donuts. This sounds like something from 30 Rock. I'm actually wearing the apple fritter deodorant right now. Yes. It's the crossover nobody asked for. So there really is a lot of sugar in this shit.

Like, absurd amount of sugar. Oh, my God. She did it. You said you didn't like the donuts and here you are eating one. They're disgusting. I want to just go through. I want to go through some. of the nutritional data that they themselves post on their site.

So a large strawberry culata has 110 grams of sugar. Disgusting. But that's on the lower side, actually. Yes. A vanilla bean culata, ranging from small to large, is either 83 grams to 167 grams of sugar. All the frozen chocolate, frozen coffees, and frozen chai drinks are at least set 50 grams of sugar.

They go up to 168. A large berry blue lemonade refresher. This is 74 grams. That's a real steel, healthy. And a large chocolate-covered banana ice coffee has 67 grams of sugar. Folks, that's just a lot of sugar. It's just a lot. I just looked up, and the daily dietary guidelines are apparently 50 grams per day.

Per day. You've bloated. I'm sorry, Mrs. Kennedy. I'm sorry. You don't want people to be able to have whatever the hell they want. This is America. Exactly. We drive big pickup trucks and we drink big sugary coffees.

Yeah. Not the nanny state here. Yeah. And if you think this is absurd and obviously people aren't ordering this shit, you're wrong. I did a little bit of investigative journalism. I went on a Facebook page where people were asked to tell them their favorite Dunkin order. And I came away truly depressed about humanity. I'm just going to read a couple of people's favorite orders.

These are just random people. I'm not going to name who they are, but these are real. One woman says that her favorite order is large ice coffee with five creams, five liquid sugars, five mocha shots, or a medium ice coffee with two mocha shots, two caramel shots, four creams, and three liquid sugars with cold foam on top. No. One woman says she likes the large ice coffee with four caramel, eight liquid sugars, and six BB shots. I realize that BB is actually blueberry.

This is just disgusting. combinations of flavors on top of absurd amounts of sugar. And then this was more like why, but this one person said he likes an extra, extra large hot original coffee, fine, with eight splendor. Oh. Oh. I'm not going to be part of drink shaming. Okay.

Fair enough. You're not going to shame these people for their drinks. I don't know. How many Splendid does it take to give a rat cancer? Like, at that point, you're not drinking coffee. You know, you're not drinking coffee. So I took it upon myself to say, I'm not going to drink shame either. I'm with you, Javila.

And I'm not going to knock it unless I try it. So we went out and we got this absurdly large tub of coffee. This is what's in it. Gonzo journalism right here. This is it. Okay, five shots of caramel, two shots of blueberry, two coconuts, three Splenda and four cream. Now, like Dartmouth, you've got to chug the whole thing. Okay.

Oh, God. It's all. Okay. Here we go. Frank the tank. Frank the tank. Yes. That's awesome.

Oh, my God. That's awesome. How is this different from having a melted Sunday? Oh, it tastes like ice cream. It just tastes like liquid melted ice cream. Yeah. Wow. Oh, while you harden your arteries for the entertainment of our audience, Sam.

I will just say there is something. absurd about having a roided out ketamine addict. Yes. Who looks like he injects HGH into his eyeballs every morning and horse steroids into his ass every night running around telling people what they can and can't put into their feldch holes. You know what Sam really needs in his beverage? You know what he really needs?

Beef tallow. Beef, right. Yeah, I think that our HHS secretary would begin to that. This is the thing about the Maha stuff. It isn't the case that they want everybody to be healthy. They just want everybody to use the weird shit they like. They want you to take Ivor. They don't want you to get the MMR vaccine,

but if you've got a cough, you should be starting to take some Ivermectin to head that off, right? You get your ovaremectins. And they want ketamine. You should be microdosing ketamine, and everybody should be on HGH, and they have a massive. million quack supplements and, well, have you tried colloidal silver?

It is, it isn't even about make America healthy. It's, it's this weird group of crazy people who just want to force everybody else to be as crazy as they are. Well, and there may be some MLM side to all of this too, right? Maybe not for the ivermectin, but for some of this other stuff, Chinese peptides and whatever else. He's been asked about this, right? Like someone was like, you know, you go tanning in like tanning salons and you, you're zinning all the time.

Like, who are you? Right? And I think he said, well, I never said be like me. It's like don't the, which is you can't dictate to everyone else what they can and can't do if it can't be like you. So I find it, I find it absurd. And there's better ways to go about doing this than shaming people. You can like educate them and work with Duncan rather than outlying. No, no.

See, because if you do that like Michelle Obama. you're a communist. Yes, that's communist. Right. If you simply do after school programs or you tell kids to exercise and you try to get vegetables into school lunches,

well, that's the mark of the beast. And we need to have an insurrection and a tea party and all that stuff because you're a communist. When you do this, you're making America healthy again. Well, I will say this. I think going after Duncan is a step too far.

Already we have the governor, Massachusetts, more he'll say, come and take it with an ice coffee and the logo. People will revolt legitimately if he goes after Duncan. That's just, you can't do that. He's going to lose Massachusetts, you know, when he runs for president for the fourth time. Trump better be worried. Let me ask you guys a question, though.

Does this have the, if you were Duncan, would you be spooked at being turned into a blue brand by accident? Yeah. So, I mean, if, if, right, if maybe if the governor of Massachusetts, is latching on and saying, come and take it, are you concerned that people in Texas are going to decide, well, shit, I can't be drinking no Dunkin' Donuts. That's lib juice.

I got to go to Buckees and get Buckees coffee with 85 sugars in it. Sure. I mean, yes and no, because I don't think there's market penetration of Duncan and Texas yet, although the map says they are in some of the urban zones. It's really mostly East Coast with spots of California. But two is, I don't know. maybe this is just my New England bias here, but like Duncan is iconic.

Like, no, I think people just don't associate Dunkin politics, period. And I don't think RFK Jr. returning his focus on them was going to make them into a blue brand. Have you, have you memory hold what happened with Budweiser? But that's different. This is sugar. Not having trans, you know, spokespeople is fundamentally different. Sugar. Everyone loves sugar.

Come on. But I think at the point that you. enter the culture wars for whatever reason you enter the culture wars. They didn't enter the culture wars. RFK brought the culture wars on them. They're just doing sugar. You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you, Sam. Duncan is just an iconic. And it's also sort of like, that's a blue collar coffee. Come on. That's not. As opposed to bud, Bud Light. Bud Light was trying. Bud Light was moving away. That was the whole problem with the Budlight thing. They're moving away from the blue-collar nature. You're wrong on this one.

Way wrong. Catherine, how would you advise Duncan corporate to manage this? Because on the one hand, you can't look like you're capitulating to him because then you'll anger your lib customers, but you don't want to be turned into like Democratic blue juice. What do you do? I think there's probably nothing you can say or do that will not alienate somebody. because it's so much fun to talk about Duncan, as we are doing right now, like, there are going to be other politicians who sees on it and you're going to be drafted into one side or another whether you want to be drafted in the culture wars. So I think if I were them, I would just shut up. Well, this raises a great question. This raises a great question.

Are there brands iconic enough that they could live above the culture wars and not get dragged into them? Is there like something so Americana that you're just like, huh? I mean, not the NFL. And you would think the NFL would be. Not the NFL. I mean, didn't McDonald's try to signal like, hey, yeah, we're going to test pilot beef tallow or something, right? To get RFK off their back. And so they did like whatever, like what Foxconn, Apple do with Trump.

Yeah, we're going to spend a billion dollars on American manufacturing someday. And then Trump declares victory and they keep doing what they're doing. McDonald's did that, right? They pretended to capitulate for a half hour until the circus moved on. I guess Duncan could do that, but I don't know, man. Yeah, we'll look into, we'll look into like less sugar. We'll cut it down a few grams from 115 to 112. On the app, we won't let people select more than 15 additional sugars.

You could top out of five flavors, not eight. I mean, they can say we're not forcing it. anyone to order all the disgusting stuff that's in Sam's drink. Yeah. Freedom. Well, we'll see. Guys, this has been a real pleasure.

I do need to wash out my mouth. Enjoy your freedom. It's turning really dry and the coconut flavor is awful. Don't combine it with the caramel. I think that's the diabetes that you just induced in yourself. The diabetes? Yes. Wolford Brimley.

It's the diabetes, Sam got. Got to go walk down to GW Hospital. Get my cholesterol. I'll track that out to this. All right, JVL. Catherine, thanks so much to the good folks at Duncan. Look,

we love you. If you want to come sponsor, the bulwark, happily would take your ad dollars. We support Duncan. And one more for good measure. Oh, so good.

Thank you for subscribing to the bulwark where you support good stuff like this. Talk to you soon. Goodbye. Oh, I spilled a little on my mic.