Today, Explained - RFK Jr. wants to Make America Healthy Again

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Kennedy adviser Calley Means explains why so many Americans are suspicious of food and pharma companies, and what the HHS secretary nominee plans to do about it if he's confirmed. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Avishay Artsy, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Rob Byers, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert Flouride Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate today in fiery confirmation hearings. Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bio weapon? I probably did say that. Kennedy makes two big arguments about our health and the first is deeply divisive. He is skeptical of vaccines. Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines. Science disagrees.

The second argument is something that a lot of Americans, regardless of their politics, have concluded. He says our food system is serving us garbage and that garbage is making us sick. Coming up on Today Explained, a confidante of Kennedy's, in fact, the man who helped facilitate his introduction to Donald Trump, on what the Make America Healthy Again movement wants.

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There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical. Health. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical. Healthcare just got less painful. You're listening to Today Explained. Callie Means is an informal advisor to RFK who went viral on Twitter about two years ago with this explosive claim Callie had worked as a consultant for Coca-Cola and he said that he'd witnessed coke give millions of dollars to various groups

To ensure that sugar taxes failed and that soda was included in food stamp funding The NAACP took millions of dollars from Coca-Cola to say that we should maintain Coca-Cola on food stamps Which is just an absolutely insane public policy because that's literally poisoning lower income kids with a supplemental nutrition assistance program. Callie went on to co-author a book with his sister, Dr. Casey Means, called Good Energy, and he founded a company called TrueMed. Today he maintains deep skepticism of big food and big pharma, and he contends that these industries have economic incentives not to make Americans well, but to keep us sick.

In hindsight, what I saw is that the health care system is working to propagate a system where more Americans are sick and to perform interventions on those Americans, not to cure any disease, but manage it. And that's 95% of our medical spending. 95% of our medical spending is management of chronic disease. So examples of that are in this invisible hand at work where I don't even think people realize what they're doing is working for Coca-Cola funding millions of dollars to the American Diabetes Association.

I saw that. So why is Coca-Cola funding the American Diabetes Association? And why would the American Diabetes Association be accepting money from Coca-Cola when we have a diabetes crisis among children, when it's liquid diabetes, it's high sugar drinks? So there's actually this interplay between our food system, our ultra-processed food system that's getting people addicted, that's getting people sick, and then a healthcare system that stands silent. So that's on the food side. On the pharmaceutical side, it's the rigging of institutions.

The pharmaceutical industry is the lifeblood of academic research, and the NIH and the federal bureaucracies just by definition are a revolving door, an orgy of corruption between industry and government. I mean, 11 of the 12 past FDA directors literally left the FDA and the next day walked into a pharmaceutical office. I had a list of Stanford and Harvard professors that we were going to funnel money to. These aren't apparent corruption. It's rank corruption, and I saw that.

Kelly, what do you hear as the main pushback against you? What do your critics argue? Well, they resort to ad hominem attacks. If you really stay on these unimpeachable messages, I think they're pretty hard to disagree with. It's a demonstrable fact that our scientific and healthcare agencies are co-opted. 75% of the FDA department that oversees drug approvals is funded by the pharmaceutical industry itself.

NIH bureaucrats are able to take royalties from drugs, which they did during COVID. It's also impossible to argue with the fact that we're the sickest country in the developed world, and there's a true chronic disease crisis among children. That's pretty hard to argue with. So what happens is the healthcare industry is the largest and fastest growing industry in the country.

It's the most powerful industry in the country. The pharmaceutical industry is the biggest funder of politicians themselves, scientific research, regulatory agencies, the media itself. So they control a lot of our institutions, just by definition. I've seen some of the ad hominem attacks. I've also seen another line of criticism about you and what you have to say, which is that

there's this claim, I mean, you've made it, right? There's a claim that there's almost a conspiracy at play here that involves big food companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical schools. It goes all the way to the top levels of government. I wonder if you can explain that aspect of your message. Why does everything, because you know that many people will be turned off by kind of what they view as conspiratorial thinking. Might it make sense to temper this a little bit? Do you think part of the problem is, like, you know, it sounds a bit nutty, someone might

say, right? What sounds nutty that I said? The idea that everybody is in league to keep Americans sick. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I completely dispute the premise of your question. I said that the pharmaceutical industry makes money when people are sick and loses money when they're healthy.

That's not a conspiracy. That's a demonstrable statement of economic fact. And hospitals make money from fee for service. Many friends from Harvard Business School of mine work at hospitals and their job is dependent on filling the beds. That's not a conspiracy. I'm gonna push just a little bit further on this, Kelly,

because there are statements of fact that you are making, yes, and they will pass a fact check it's it's the idea that pharmaceutical companies want to keep us sick I didn't say that companies want to keep us I didn't say that I said their economic incentives really well the economic incentive is the want I mean it's America it's a capital society like no I didn't I didn't talk about their motivations what are their motivations this is the largest industry in the country, is health care. A pharmaceutical executive gets fired if there's not growth.

Growth of pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical industry presupposes and necessitates more sick people. You're saying there is an economic incentive. Somebody gets fired unless the company grows. The company requires more sick patients to grow. That's an indisputable fact. I think that many people would agree with you that when there is money involved, the incentives to grow, to grow the company can lead to perverse outcomes like a lot of sick

Americans. You are the founder of a company that sells, among other things, supplements, fitness classes, fitness equipment. I was on this morning, you have some good sales. You personally have an economic incentive in this too, and I wonder, is there any part of you that thinks maybe I should just be the guy that says the thing but not try to make money off it? Well, that's inaccurate.

My company facilitates third-party medical interventions to recommend whether exercise, supplementation, food in some cases is a medically appropriate intervention. And you're not making any profit? No, no, hold on. Sure, sure, go ahead. Excuse me, excuse me. No, I don't think we should expect nobody to make money.

I think everyone's financial conflicts should be highly exposed. My company makes money when a third party provider recommends efficacious treatments of root cause non-pharmaceutical interventions. My company will make money when more people are exercising and more people are eating broccoli. And I am absolutely fine that being exposed and that being scrutinized of whether I'm in the pocket of big exercise and big broccoli. President Trump appointed a seed oil lobbyist to be chief of staff of the USDA. He fought Obama era rules to cut ultra processed foods from school lunch.

He made RFK eat a Big Mac for a photo op. In the 2024 election, President Trump overwhelmingly won in America's farm dependent counties. Those are areas where there is a lot of farming. And so you would assume the president has to really take care not to alienate big ag. Do you think President Trump really is genuinely invested in the Maha movement? Well, he didn't have to appoint Bobby Kennedy. He didn't have to say at every single rally that he was going to have Bobby Kennedy go wild on health.

So President Trump said this, he doesn't think a lot about health policy, but what he does think a lot about is corruption and taking on the swamp and taking on corporate cronyism. And I think he's really seen in Bobby Kennedy how the forces that profit from sick children are a great example of what the foundation of President Trump's candidacy is about, which is corruption holding us down. So yes, I don't think there's any cabinet secretary that there's more demonstrated history with and bonding with during the campaign than Bobby Kennedy. There is an area here that is deeply divisive, and it will come up again and again, we can

predict in Mr. Kennedy's hearing. And that is his views on vaccines. So he has said before that he believes autism comes from vaccines. He runs a nonprofit children's health defense that consistently cast doubt on vaccines, on the schedule on which they're administered, on the ingredients in them,

on whether they protect or actually cause chronic illnesses. Do Mr. Kennedy's positions on vaccines concern you at all? What Bobby Kennedy has consistently said about vaccines during the campaign is that they should be studied like any other pharmaceutical product. Blanket trust of pharmaceutical companies is not a good idea either. And continued scientific research on interventions

we're providing to the American people, whether that be pharmaceuticals or the other billion prescriptions we're writing to the American people, whether that be pharmaceuticals or the other billion prescriptions we're writing in America a year, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. And even what you mentioned about the Children's Health Defense, you didn't say that they're attacking all vaccines

in general, you said they're questioning the pharmaceutical schedule, they're questioning specific ingredients. I mean, I don't know, you know, we should be scrutinizing each formulation and whether that's safe and which the safest vaccine is. I mean, that's a good thing to do. We, you know, we have demonstrably different schedules than other countries. Like, you know, continued research and refining of that is, seems like a reasonable thing to do. So I think there's a lot of frankly pharma money and bad money making that the key issue, even

though he's talking about much wider things. Our parents are old enough to remember polio. We're in the millennial generation and polio feels like it was a million years ago. It really wasn't. Americans broadly are susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. One of the concerns that I know you don't like the word conspiratorial, but let me offer you the concern as I've heard it articulated. Americans are going to decide they don't like the word conspiratorial, but let me offer you the concern, as I've heard it articulated. Americans are going to decide

they don't trust vaccines broadly. They are not going to vaccinate their children, and that will return us to a generation and a time that most people just don't want to go back to. I think you just painted an extremely pessimistic and nihilistic view of the American people. What an unfounded statement to say that they're prone to conspiracy thinking. That's kind of a dismissive statement. I myself am prone to it. I am happy to say I'm...

Well, maybe that's being rational. Maybe that's being prone to questioning things. Listen, this is what President Trump and Bobby talked about during the campaign, and I strongly believe. The American people are rational. The American people don't want their kids to be sick. I really commend and respect the media harkening back, and their concern for polio, and polio coming back. But I would push you, if you or anyone else is concerned about childhood health, which is the real issue here, we should be concerned about what's happening right now. We have a chronic disease crisis.

We have a truly societally destabilizing event happening. Yes, I agree, we should keep Polio at bay, but like that's not even on the top 10 list. Let me ask you a last question. If Mr. Kennedy is confirmed, MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement, is very close to being inside the system, maybe even in a couple of years, being the system.

And some people might say, well, that's when the work gets really hard, right? It's easier to be an outsider than it is to be an insider. Do you have any thoughts on that, on what it might be like for this, at the moment, outsider movement to operate on the inside? Do you think it'll be tough? What the promise of Maha is, is Bobby, a reform-minded person, I would say a magnetic, incredible leader, is putting a stake in the ground that we need to move to a more preventative model and a more

chronic disease reversal focused model of health. That's his stake. And I had a really profound conversation with the dean of a med school recently, and he was honest. And he said, listen, everyone in the faculty lounge thinks Bobbie's a whack job. And, you know, if you steer NIH funding to more preventative outcomes, and that's kind of where the NIH is going, they're going to kick and scream and complain and say that's stupid, but they're going to write grants for what the NIH is saying they want. And if you can win and keep this kind of vibe and this movement towards that more preventative pull. In four years and six years, Bobby will be gone.

But if that preventative direction that the health incentives go towards stays that way, in six years, it'll be the norm. In six years, it won't be about Bobby being crazy. It'll just be like, this is how things are done. And that's the stakes right now, is we're trying to, we've lost our way a bit. Our health incentives are too focused on waiting for people

to get sick and then managing those conditions. I would argue profiting from those conditions. What we're trying to do is get conflicts of interest out of the system and steer the sizable incentives that the government creates towards a more preventative future that asks how can we actually prevent and reverse these diseases. That's the fight right now and and we just have to continue to win that argument. You know at the at the highest level these are unimpeachable ideas that most Americans agree with. It's not going

to be total shock and awe. We're not going to be total shock and awe. We're not going to be able to change everything at once. But we really have changed the country if we can accomplish that momentum shift to that world. Cali Means. The book is good energy. The company is TruMed. Thank you so much for taking the time for us today.

We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time for us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Before we go, you heard Callie say that the healthcare industry is the biggest in America. In fact, the biggest industry in America is quite hard to determine when you get right down to it. The biggest funder of academic research is not, as he said, the healthcare industry. It is in fact the federal government. Regulators and media do get a lot of money

from the healthcare industry, but it is not their biggest funder. And now, a note from our funders. Amazon One Medical presents Painful Thoughts. I could catch anything sitting in this doctor's waiting room. Ugh, a kid just wiped his runny nose on my jacket. And the guy next to me, sitting in a pool of perspiration, insists on sharing my arm rest. Ugh.

Next time, make an appointment with an Amazon One Medical provider. There's no waiting and no sweaty guy. Amazon One Medical. Health care just got less painful. You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Halina Bademiller-Evich. I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, which is a newsletter about food policy. I've been covering these issues in Washington for about

15 years. In the first half of the show, we talked to Callie Means, who's an advisor to RFK Jr. And Callie told us that Americans will agree on much of what he is saying, that as a population, we are sicker more often than we should be, for longer than we should be. What do you think of the points that he makes? I think overall, Callie is correct that most Americans would agree on those issues. They're concerned about chronic disease, access to healthy food for kids.

You know, there's a lot of questions about why our rates of diet-related diseases have continued to climb. Diabetes, obesity, these diseases are not just costly for the healthcare system, but they really affect people's lives. So there is deep concern. I think where we get into some division is what to do about that

and what the government's role is. And that's, I think, where the rubber's really gonna meet the road here. So MAHA first became, I think, an actual term that was entering the fray, if you will, in August when RFK Jr. had dropped out of the presidential race. And he endorsed Donald Trump, which surprised a lot of people. If I'm given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production,

I promise that within two years, we will watch chronic disease burden lift dramatically. We will make Americans healthy again. And in this alliance, Trump then adopted some of the platform around food. So you then started hearing then-candidate Trump saying, like, I want to get the toxins out of food. You know, I want to make America healthy again. Millions and millions of Americans who want clean air, clean water, and a healthy nation have concerns about toxins in our environment and pesticides in our food. This immediately perked my ears up because I've been covering these issues for a long time and

generally you would hear those arguments being made on the left. And Democrats, you know, here in Washington weren't getting much traction on them, but those are the folks who were raising those arguments. So then when I heard Trump raising those issues, I immediately thought something is happening here that is fundamentally different. There is some political realignment that is happening. You know, up until even a couple months ago, I couldn't remember ever hearing a Republican talk about food additives on Capitol Hill. And as of September, we were seeing senators, like, openly and publicly saying, you know, FDA needs to look at Red Die 3 or whatever the issue was. And that was just a real turn of events. We got to help, you know, get our kids healthy, chronic disease, viruses, and RFK Jr. is the

guy to do that. Let's say that RFK is confirmed and he is the new leader, he is the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services. What does he want to do to that agency? What has he said? We're waiting to hear details, but I think in general he has talked about getting conflicts of interest out of healthcare decisions and also food decisions. So I focus on food. One of the big issues has been the dietary guidelines for Americans, which is the official

nutrition advice from the government. RFK has taken issue with a lot of the experts that advise the government on that process, saying they have too many conflicts of interest with the food industry and sometimes pharma. He wants to really reform that process. We don't know exactly how, but HHS and USDA work together on those guidelines and they're actually set to come out in 2025. So he could have a lot of influence over what those guidelines say. For example, the advisory committee that just wrapped up told the government that there wasn't enough evidence to essentially recommend that Americans consume less ultra-processed foods.

Kennedy himself has been extremely critical of ultra-processed foods, so that's one area where perhaps the guidelines would say something about ultra-processed foods. So there are issues like that. He also wants to reorient NIH research to look more at root causes, more at holistic interventions, so not as much focused on pharma and sort of traditional medical interventions. Food additives, cracking down potentially on food additives, although I have a lot of questions about whether or not

the Trump administration is really going to regulate, which is what you would have to do to crack down on food additives. RFK has also made a lot of claims about completely changing the food system on the USDA side, which he will not have purview over, but he's talked about changing farm subsidies, cleaning up school meals, so actually banning processed foods from school meals, just really upending that multi-billion dollar program. How challenging will it be to make reforms within the food system? So it really depends on the issue.

If you're talking about something like totally changing how we subsidize food in this country, that would require Congress. You would have to write a farm bill that's going to reform the system and that a lot of that falls over at USDA, which RFK would not have jurisdiction over. That is Brooke Rollins, who's been nominated for that position and she's much more of, I think, a status quo pick. So that would be one area where it would be very difficult, I would say exceedingly unlikely that that's going to happen. But on some of the issues that would fall under FDA, you could really bring down the

hammer on food additives if that were the priority. They could speed up all these post-market reviews, which means they take a really hard look at a lot of the chemicals that are already in the food supply. They could really close this loophole, which allows a lot of substances on the market without pre-market approval. And so there are some policy changes that could happen there, but it would require going through a regulatory process, you know, allowing those bureaucratic wheels to turn. But again, on each of these, it's like pushing a boulder uphill. And so I would not bet that in five to 10 years, we're going to see that reality. But I think that would be the ideal

that they would be pushing for. We'll see again, the extent to which Republicans in this administration are going to be, you know, using the federal government to push that vision forward. It's in some ways a radical departure from where we are now. from where we are now. It's Today Explained. Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts. The guy in front of me in the pharmacy line is halfway through an incredibly detailed

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