Robert F Kennedy Jr’s new Secretary Kennedy Podcast is a show that, so far, appears designed to promote Trump administration talking points over any specific public health message.
Though, based on the trailer and episode one, which dropped last week, one might expect the Secretary Kennedy Podcast to be quite similar to the health secretary’s former show, The RFK Jr Podcast. In the trailer that dropped ahead of his new podcast’s release, Kennedy says: “Children are sicker, chronic disease is exploding and the answers we’ve been given aren’t working” – talking points that were common on his old series. He even adds: “Many of us have come to the conclusion that the government actually lies to us,” a statement that might have served his former podcast better, given that Kennedy is now a senior figure in the government.
In the original trailer for the RFK Jr Podcast, which is 18 minutes long and launched in early February 2021, around when people first began receiving Covid vaccines, Kennedy says: “We’ve come together today to protest this coup d’etat by big data, by big telecom, by big tech, by the big oil and chemical companies, and by this global public health cartel led by Bill Gates and the WHO. It now amounts to $2tn and wants to magnify and amplify its wealth and its power over our lives, over our liberties. It wants to subvert our democracies and wants to destroy our sovereignty and our control over our lives and our children’s health.”
The RFK Jr Podcast, for much of its run, aligned its messaging with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy led, which raises millions yearly in donations that go towards lobbying, litigation and media campaigns targeting vaccines and chemical manufacturers. Children’s Health Defense does not provide or develop any healthcare solutions.
Early episodes of Kennedy’s first show focused on raising suspicions about the government response to Covid-19, the safety of Covid vaccines and the motivations of Anthony Fauci, who served as chief medical adviser to former president Joe Biden. A May 2021 episode, titled “Former Pfizer Vice President Dr. Mike Yeadon Speaks Out”, is exemplary of the early agenda of the show. Yeadon left Pfizer in 2011, nearly a decade before Pfizer began its Covid vaccine development, but Yeadon claims to have insight about Pfizer’s alleged corruption during the Covid-19 vaccine development process. Shortly before appearing on The RFK Jr Podcast, Yeadon asserted, falsely, that asymptomatic people cannot spread Covid, and that healthy people face more risk than benefit from Covid vaccines.
When Kennedy began his own presidential campaign in 2023, the focus of his show began to shift somewhat away from health conspiracies and towards other topics, such as the economy and the war in Ukraine. During his campaign, Kennedy opposed US support for the war and brought on multiple guests who believed that Russia was at least partially justified in its invasion of Ukraine, including Scott Ritter, Benjamin Abelow and Col Douglas Macgregor.
Once Kennedy bowed out of the presidential race in August of 2024, he shifted gears on the show yet again. Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy amid rumors that he would receive a position in Trump’s cabinet in return, and soon after introduced the slogan “Make America healthy again” as part of the title of one of his podcast episodes.
Now part of the Trump administration, Kennedy’s first guest on his new podcast had a long history with Trump but no involvement with health or healthcare. That guest, celebrity chef Robert Irvine, used to work as executive chef at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Throughout their conversation, Kennedy and Irvine do not name any specific health conditions their advice is meant to address, but speak vaguely of “chronic diseases” that are “diet-related”, and loosely connect Irvine’s experience negotiating food prices for restaurants and for military bases to Americans’ experience trying to buy healthy groceries.
The main agenda of the episode seems to be to convince Americans that food is still affordable. Trump has also claimed that “groceries are way down” and dismissed people who say that grocery prices are a problem. Kennedy’s conversation with Irvine on the Secretary Kennedy Podcast, where the pair encouraged Americans to eat more “whole foods”, came shortly after the National WIC Association denounced Trump’s plans to reduce WIC fruit and vegetable benefits for young children and their families.
Future episodes will tell if the show can live up to Kennedy’s promise in the trailer: “I’m gonna ask the questions and lift the taboos and expose the hypocrisy and the conflicts and the corruption. We’re gonna follow the evidence wherever it leads, and we’re gonna name the names of the forces that obstruct the path to public health.”
