O4fxssake. Trump is a creepy puppet who’s mouth moves but who’s voice comes from whatever senior advisor’s hand is up his shorts. The Monsanto gift is the result of Brook Rollins doing the fondling.
Each and every MAGA and Trump supporter needs the living shit kicked out of them (without their medical expenses being paid with taxpayer dollars). There, I said it. Plenty of $$$ for ICE to terrorize people, but defunding the NIH which actually helps people? And all I can say is, Bhattacharya better not show himself around me, because it won't end well. There, I said it.
Dudes, you missed the third punch of the one - two - three punch that the MAHAs got this last week. First they got the TACO on allowing the mRNA flu vaccine from Moderna. Next was the TACO on Glyphosate the active compound in Roundup, but y'all probably should have mentioned this:
"Anger as Trump FDA retreats from plan to ban artificial colors in food"
"In a further retreat from its pledge to ban artificial dyes from food, Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would loosen labeling requirements to allow companies to state 'no artificial colors', even though products may contain some dangerous substances such as titanium dioxide."
Trump and RFK Jr lied to the voters, and as soon as they got into office then they cater to every corporate chemical company's demands.
And this even forgets about Trump's roll back of pollution laws. Now it's safe for coal burning plants to put out more mercury.
"Trump administration eases limits on coal plant emissions of mercury and other toxins"
"Coal plants are the largest single human source of mercury pollutants. The mercury emitted later falls in rain or simply by gravity, entering the food chain through fish and other items that people consume."
Hey MAHA - how's this Trump regime working out for ya?
They want Glycol banned, they want Moderna out of biz, they want Fauci and Gates in Jail…they are the one issue voters Trump courts. Make the breakup be brutal!
Well-done piece demonstrating the teeter-totter that MAHA is on. It’s not just the glyphosate or even the mercury ( a truly heinous chemical in certain forms) but the other chemicals such as lead and arsenic associated with the deregulation of coal announced this week. All that is great reporting but your conclusion is sharp. Just like the Epstein files aren’t about the co-conspirators, these issues are not about Trump, RFKjr (or KidRock), or any influencer or podcaster, it’s about the potentially harmful impact their corrupt policies have on We The People
I have nothing but scorn for these MAHA fools and their faux concerns about health. They ignore the most obvious danger to human health in climate change and all sorts of other pollution, supporting an administration that is an environmental nightmare while whining about freaking food dyes. (Even while they supposedly don't eat the kind of processed food that contains food dyes.)
And while they complain about big pharma and its profit motives, they are either clueless or feign ignorance of the ginormous profits in the unregulated alternative health world, like the supplements and pseudoscientific accessories and gadgets.
And with their anti-vaxxer nonsense, they pretend that vaccine science and other medical research hasn't extended our lifespan dramatically and probably saved most of their lives or the lives of their children in one way or another. I would wager that none of them have seen firsthand the ravages of smallpox or polio. Do they ever wonder why that is?
“MAHA’s leaders say they feel like Trump has betrayed their trust and, in the process, alienated their followers.”
All I have to say is—whad’ya expect? When has the liar in chief ever been honest? When? He’s a psychologically unstable individual. Ever notice? No? Well many of us can see through it. So to those MAHA supporters who are disappointed—go see a psych so you can learn how you fell into the trap that’s blatantly apparent to so many of us.
First, to belabor the obvious, the odd alt-health subculture that supports Kennedy now, and Kennedy's conspiracy theory crusades, have been around for many a year, but were never labelled 'MAHA' until Jr. threw in with Trump. The idea that there's an actual even semi-coherent 'MAHA movement' with some grass-roots cred separate from the expediency of Bobby jumping on the Trump train is dubious at best. No serious advocate of healthy lifestyle advice on diet and exercise takes raw milk guzzler, obvious mega-juicer and all-round psycho RFKj as a genuine advocate. He's strictly for adherents to various strains of magical thinking and supplement scams.
But HHS Secretary is a position of some power, so various figures who weren't in Jr.'s camp before he got that seat are now cuddling up to him to get in on the action: including the key figures of Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, and Dr. Oz. (The true Kennedy peeps are folks like Aaron Siri and Casey Means.)
Significantly, the new crew have no history with old-school anti-vax directed at jabs for childhood diseases. Rather they made their bones with MAGA before there was MAHA, by opposing COVID mitigation measures.
Bhattacharya is especially important here. He's a Stanford/Hoover Institute (hard right) health economist, and most to the point a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) an anti-mitigation manifesto from early in the pandemic that argued for letting the virus run rampant among the general population -- protecting (somehow, unexplained) only the most vulnerable on the premise herd immunity would quickly arrive. Which, had it been followed would, would have lead to massive more numbers of preventable death, permanent injury, long COVID etc. The GBD was basically fringe epidemiology foisted as an excuse for the Trumpy 'Don't mess with the economy' business interests. The guy behind it, who recruited Bhattacharya and the two other academics who signed it, is a right wing political operative named Jeffrey Tucker, an "advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin" (wikipedia). At the time, he was employed by the AIER, a 'libertarian' think tank that operates a 9 figure investment fund with large holdings in fossil fuel and tobacco companies, also gets Koch money, and is unsurprisingly big on climate-change denial. Tucker himself has advocated against child labor laws, and also against campaigns discouraging kids from smoking.
The GBD drew influence far greater than it deserved, and to keep the COVID propaganda going Tucker founded the Brownstone Institute calling it "the spiritual child of the GBD".
Which is why it's weird to see Jonathan identify Brownstone as "MAHA-aligned" presumably for advocating against mRNA vaccine approval, somewhat bizarrely as a 'medical freedom' issue. What appears to be going on here is that 'health freedom' - which is Brownstone's ideological jam - sold well enough to the anti-mandate crowd opposed to masks, social distancing and closings, that the folks opposed to any kind of vaccine mandates joined in, and Brownstone is just playing to its COVID-conspiracy crowd influenced by Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer.
It's not an anti-pharma move, it's an anti-public health move. That's the bottom line of why MAHA is useful for MAGA. All you have to do to stay healthy is exercise, eat right, and take the right supplements. So your health is all on you. You don't need health insurance, or a local hospital, or any kind of BIG GUVMENT program that spends tax money or impinges your freedom to do whatever you want whether the community of nannies likes it or not.
Finally, it's a bit odd that Jonathan didn't mention that glyphosate is integral to GMO agriculture - as the main use of those mods is to increase resistance to RoundUp. So in addition to a generic opposition to pesticides, 'natural food' types have all sorts of fears of 'frankenfoods'. Which gets mixed-up with other critiques of Bayer's whole system of glyphosate/GMO industrial ag which have nothing to do with either the chemical or the food being harmful to humans, but corporate control, knock-on environmental issues, soil depletion, etc. etc.
Isn't it interesting how cock-eyed it is that Kennedy is clueless about the relative safety of mercury compounds in vaccine carrier solutions, yet understands (or at least claimed to while he was a litigator) the danger of industrial mercury compounds realeaed into our air and water through the use of coal in power plant boilers?
An explanation of "suspected or potential carcinogen" The test is you put the substance in a petri dish dish with some bacteria and see how many mutations occur in the bacteria. If the number of mutations is larger than background, the substance is a "mutagen" Here's where it gets tricky--all carcinogens are mutagens but not all mutagens are carcinogens, so further study is warranted. So, juries don't grasp this distinction they pass out huge awards on sketchy science. If the use of millions of pounds of glyphosate haven't resulted in large numbers of cancers, then it seems the link is tenuous at best
Another example of how upside down our country has become. Super-Christians support the most un-Christian person on the planet, and MAHA people support a former drug addict, who eats roadkill, and whose skin looks like leather. It's beyond me how they reconcile all of this. If only they had listened to Michelle Obama!
Another great article by Jonathan Cohn! I love The Bulwark regulars but Cohn, Catherine Rampell, and Will Sommer are top-shelf journalists and commentators in their specific fields (health care, economics, conspiracy theories).
O4fxssake. Trump is a creepy puppet who’s mouth moves but who’s voice comes from whatever senior advisor’s hand is up his shorts. The Monsanto gift is the result of Brook Rollins doing the fondling.
Each and every MAGA and Trump supporter needs the living shit kicked out of them (without their medical expenses being paid with taxpayer dollars). There, I said it. Plenty of $$$ for ICE to terrorize people, but defunding the NIH which actually helps people? And all I can say is, Bhattacharya better not show himself around me, because it won't end well. There, I said it.
Dudes, you missed the third punch of the one - two - three punch that the MAHAs got this last week. First they got the TACO on allowing the mRNA flu vaccine from Moderna. Next was the TACO on Glyphosate the active compound in Roundup, but y'all probably should have mentioned this:
"Anger as Trump FDA retreats from plan to ban artificial colors in food"
"In a further retreat from its pledge to ban artificial dyes from food, Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would loosen labeling requirements to allow companies to state 'no artificial colors', even though products may contain some dangerous substances such as titanium dioxide."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/20/fda-artificial-colors-food
OUCH! That's gotta hurt, right MAHAs?
Trump and RFK Jr lied to the voters, and as soon as they got into office then they cater to every corporate chemical company's demands.
And this even forgets about Trump's roll back of pollution laws. Now it's safe for coal burning plants to put out more mercury.
"Trump administration eases limits on coal plant emissions of mercury and other toxins"
"Coal plants are the largest single human source of mercury pollutants. The mercury emitted later falls in rain or simply by gravity, entering the food chain through fish and other items that people consume."
Hey MAHA - how's this Trump regime working out for ya?
They want Glycol banned, they want Moderna out of biz, they want Fauci and Gates in Jail…they are the one issue voters Trump courts. Make the breakup be brutal!
Well-done piece demonstrating the teeter-totter that MAHA is on. It’s not just the glyphosate or even the mercury ( a truly heinous chemical in certain forms) but the other chemicals such as lead and arsenic associated with the deregulation of coal announced this week. All that is great reporting but your conclusion is sharp. Just like the Epstein files aren’t about the co-conspirators, these issues are not about Trump, RFKjr (or KidRock), or any influencer or podcaster, it’s about the potentially harmful impact their corrupt policies have on We The People
I have nothing but scorn for these MAHA fools and their faux concerns about health. They ignore the most obvious danger to human health in climate change and all sorts of other pollution, supporting an administration that is an environmental nightmare while whining about freaking food dyes. (Even while they supposedly don't eat the kind of processed food that contains food dyes.)
And while they complain about big pharma and its profit motives, they are either clueless or feign ignorance of the ginormous profits in the unregulated alternative health world, like the supplements and pseudoscientific accessories and gadgets.
And with their anti-vaxxer nonsense, they pretend that vaccine science and other medical research hasn't extended our lifespan dramatically and probably saved most of their lives or the lives of their children in one way or another. I would wager that none of them have seen firsthand the ravages of smallpox or polio. Do they ever wonder why that is?
“MAHA’s leaders say they feel like Trump has betrayed their trust and, in the process, alienated their followers.”
All I have to say is—whad’ya expect? When has the liar in chief ever been honest? When? He’s a psychologically unstable individual. Ever notice? No? Well many of us can see through it. So to those MAHA supporters who are disappointed—go see a psych so you can learn how you fell into the trap that’s blatantly apparent to so many of us.
Heavens! Donald Trump betrays people? Who saw that coming?
A few things absent from this article.
First, to belabor the obvious, the odd alt-health subculture that supports Kennedy now, and Kennedy's conspiracy theory crusades, have been around for many a year, but were never labelled 'MAHA' until Jr. threw in with Trump. The idea that there's an actual even semi-coherent 'MAHA movement' with some grass-roots cred separate from the expediency of Bobby jumping on the Trump train is dubious at best. No serious advocate of healthy lifestyle advice on diet and exercise takes raw milk guzzler, obvious mega-juicer and all-round psycho RFKj as a genuine advocate. He's strictly for adherents to various strains of magical thinking and supplement scams.
But HHS Secretary is a position of some power, so various figures who weren't in Jr.'s camp before he got that seat are now cuddling up to him to get in on the action: including the key figures of Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, and Dr. Oz. (The true Kennedy peeps are folks like Aaron Siri and Casey Means.)
Significantly, the new crew have no history with old-school anti-vax directed at jabs for childhood diseases. Rather they made their bones with MAGA before there was MAHA, by opposing COVID mitigation measures.
Bhattacharya is especially important here. He's a Stanford/Hoover Institute (hard right) health economist, and most to the point a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) an anti-mitigation manifesto from early in the pandemic that argued for letting the virus run rampant among the general population -- protecting (somehow, unexplained) only the most vulnerable on the premise herd immunity would quickly arrive. Which, had it been followed would, would have lead to massive more numbers of preventable death, permanent injury, long COVID etc. The GBD was basically fringe epidemiology foisted as an excuse for the Trumpy 'Don't mess with the economy' business interests. The guy behind it, who recruited Bhattacharya and the two other academics who signed it, is a right wing political operative named Jeffrey Tucker, an "advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin" (wikipedia). At the time, he was employed by the AIER, a 'libertarian' think tank that operates a 9 figure investment fund with large holdings in fossil fuel and tobacco companies, also gets Koch money, and is unsurprisingly big on climate-change denial. Tucker himself has advocated against child labor laws, and also against campaigns discouraging kids from smoking.
The GBD drew influence far greater than it deserved, and to keep the COVID propaganda going Tucker founded the Brownstone Institute calling it "the spiritual child of the GBD".
Which is why it's weird to see Jonathan identify Brownstone as "MAHA-aligned" presumably for advocating against mRNA vaccine approval, somewhat bizarrely as a 'medical freedom' issue. What appears to be going on here is that 'health freedom' - which is Brownstone's ideological jam - sold well enough to the anti-mandate crowd opposed to masks, social distancing and closings, that the folks opposed to any kind of vaccine mandates joined in, and Brownstone is just playing to its COVID-conspiracy crowd influenced by Tucker Carlson and Laura Loomer.
It's not an anti-pharma move, it's an anti-public health move. That's the bottom line of why MAHA is useful for MAGA. All you have to do to stay healthy is exercise, eat right, and take the right supplements. So your health is all on you. You don't need health insurance, or a local hospital, or any kind of BIG GUVMENT program that spends tax money or impinges your freedom to do whatever you want whether the community of nannies likes it or not.
Finally, it's a bit odd that Jonathan didn't mention that glyphosate is integral to GMO agriculture - as the main use of those mods is to increase resistance to RoundUp. So in addition to a generic opposition to pesticides, 'natural food' types have all sorts of fears of 'frankenfoods'. Which gets mixed-up with other critiques of Bayer's whole system of glyphosate/GMO industrial ag which have nothing to do with either the chemical or the food being harmful to humans, but corporate control, knock-on environmental issues, soil depletion, etc. etc.
Isn't it interesting how cock-eyed it is that Kennedy is clueless about the relative safety of mercury compounds in vaccine carrier solutions, yet understands (or at least claimed to while he was a litigator) the danger of industrial mercury compounds realeaed into our air and water through the use of coal in power plant boilers?
Thank you for this informative article
An explanation of "suspected or potential carcinogen" The test is you put the substance in a petri dish dish with some bacteria and see how many mutations occur in the bacteria. If the number of mutations is larger than background, the substance is a "mutagen" Here's where it gets tricky--all carcinogens are mutagens but not all mutagens are carcinogens, so further study is warranted. So, juries don't grasp this distinction they pass out huge awards on sketchy science. If the use of millions of pounds of glyphosate haven't resulted in large numbers of cancers, then it seems the link is tenuous at best
Another example of how upside down our country has become. Super-Christians support the most un-Christian person on the planet, and MAHA people support a former drug addict, who eats roadkill, and whose skin looks like leather. It's beyond me how they reconcile all of this. If only they had listened to Michelle Obama!
Trump and Bobby are gonna round up all the immigrants and all the food
I wonder how many of these MAHA moms scorned Michelle Obama for her garden and her "Let's Move" campaign.
Another great article by Jonathan Cohn! I love The Bulwark regulars but Cohn, Catherine Rampell, and Will Sommer are top-shelf journalists and commentators in their specific fields (health care, economics, conspiracy theories).
Thank you so much. Means a lot! Feel truly lucky -- and honored -- to be working alongside such talented colleagues.