Within the first 4 minutes of a latest video for his “Make America Wholesome Once more” marketing campaign selling Donald Trump for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presents a seemingly compelling case about how America’s toxin-laden meals system harms us and, worse, our kids, contributing to persistent and infrequently deadly illnesses. He options unhealthy merchandise comparable to Cap’n Crunch cereal, Cheez-It crackers and Doritos chips.
Then, very similar to other moments in RFK Jr.’s unusual political trajectory — which has included peddling conspiracy theories on vaccines and different points — his “MAHA” marketing campaign plunges into outright falsehoods.
Whereas Kennedy is appropriate that Democrats have typically allowed firms to place a poisonous array of components into our meals, he bizarrely (and falsely) claims Trump banned such chemical components. In actual fact, Trump and Republicans have overturned and opposed efforts to rein within the lethal chemicalization of our meals.
As one former Trump administration Environmental Safety Company official told NBC News, “There was an enormous quantity of strain to approve chemical substances” regardless of the dangers they pose to public well being.
It’s one of many many unusual issues about Kennedy advertising Trump as a president who would make America more healthy: The details present the alternative. The proof from Trump’s first time period exhibits that if elected this fall, he would make America much less wholesome — once more.
Listed below are a number of of the numerous methods wherein Trump undermined meals security and public well being in his first time period:
- Tens of millions of People lost healthcare coverage beneath Trump. As Capital & Fundamental reported, throughout his presidency the variety of uninsured folks rose by greater than 440,000 throughout the key battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, census knowledge confirmed. In contrast, within the first two years of his presidency, Joe Biden elevated healthcare entry by greater than 3 million folks, increasing the Inexpensive Care Act and reversing Trump insurance policies that made it tougher to use for protection.
- As president, Trump rolled back regulations and bans on poisonous chemical substances together with pesticides utilized on our meals crops. Trump’s EPA rejected a ban that the Obama administration initiated in 2016 on chlorpyrifos, “which is used on more than 60 crops, notably in California, and has been blamed for sickening farm workers and inflicting development disabilities in their children,” Yale Surroundings 360 reported.
- Trump initially denied and dismissed the lethal COVID-19 pandemic, placing thousands and thousands of lives in danger, and later promoted untested and harmful “remedies” comparable to hydroxychloroquine. Trump’s Occupational Security and Well being Administration blocked efforts to reduce staff’ publicity to airborne illnesses, even whereas he ordered food industry workers and others to remain on the job because the pandemic raged on.
- Regardless of his many guarantees to “drain the swamp,” Trump tapped a former American Chemistry Council govt to assist oversee poisonous chemical regulation, and chosen a former coal lobbyist to helm the EPA in addition to a former oil lobbyist to run the Inside Division — placing trade pursuits forward of public well being and the environment.
- The Venture 2025 plan developed by dozens of Trump’s former staffers and associates requires major cuts to meals and vitamin help to lower-income People, straight harming their well being.
Regrettably, Democrats in Congress and the White Home bear some duty for companies proliferating toxins in our meals and agriculture, and beneath each events, the EPA and FDA have typically been feeble in regulating these threats. However the proof exhibits that Trump and Republicans allow extra hurt, packing these key companies with trade lobbyists and executives, reversing and stalling motion to manage harmful chemical substances, and gutting laws to guard shopper well being.
Would Vice President Kamala Harris make America more healthy? Her report suggests so. In a uncommon transfer, Scientific American endorsed Harris, citing her help for increasing healthcare entry (which, studies show, improves folks’s long-term well being), capping costs on life-preserving prescribed drugs comparable to insulin and performing to decrease the lethal harms of weapons and local weather change.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might certainly be a pressure for a more healthy America — if he adopted the proof and endorsed Harris as an alternative of Trump.
Christopher D. Cook is a journalist and the creator of “Weight-reduction plan for a Useless Planet: Massive Enterprise and the Coming Meals Disaster.”
