\n<\/p>\n
Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s new Secretary Kennedy Podcast is a show that, so far, appears designed to promote Trump administration talking points over any specific public health message.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s former show, The RFK Jr Podcast. In the trailer that dropped ahead of his new podcast\u2019s release, Kennedy says: \u201cChildren are sicker, chronic disease is exploding and the answers we\u2019ve been given aren\u2019t working\u201d \u2013 talking points that were common on his old series. He even adds: \u201cMany of us have come to the conclusion that the government actually lies to us,\u201d a statement that might have served his former podcast better, given that Kennedy is now a senior figure in the government.<\/p>\n
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: \u201cWe\u2019ve come together today to protest this coup d\u2019etat 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\u2019s health.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RFK Jr Podcast, for much of its run, aligned its messaging with Children\u2019s 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\u2019s Health Defense does not provide or develop any healthcare solutions.<\/p>\n
Early episodes of Kennedy\u2019s 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 \u201cFormer Pfizer Vice President Dr. Mike Yeadon Speaks Out\u201d, 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Once Kennedy bowed out of the presidential race in August of 2024, he shifted gears on the show yet again. Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump\u2019s candidacy amid rumors that he would receive a position in Trump\u2019s cabinet in return, and soon after introduced the slogan \u201cMake America healthy again\u201d as part of the title of one of his podcast episodes.<\/p>\n
Now part of the Trump administration, Kennedy\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cchronic diseases\u201d that are \u201cdiet-related\u201d, and loosely connect Irvine\u2019s experience negotiating food prices for restaurants and for military bases to Americans\u2019 experience trying to buy healthy groceries.<\/p>\n
The main agenda of the episode seems to be to convince Americans that food is still affordable. Trump has also claimed that \u201cgroceries are way down\u201d and dismissed people who say that grocery prices are a problem. Kennedy\u2019s conversation with Irvine on the Secretary Kennedy Podcast, where the pair encouraged Americans to eat more \u201cwhole foods\u201d, came shortly after the National WIC Association denounced Trump\u2019s plans to reduce WIC fruit and vegetable benefits for young children and their families.<\/p>\n
Future episodes will tell if the show can live up to Kennedy\u2019s promise in the trailer: \u201cI\u2019m gonna ask the questions and lift the taboos and expose the hypocrisy and the conflicts and the corruption. We\u2019re gonna follow the evidence wherever it leads, and we\u2019re gonna name the names of the forces that obstruct the path to public health.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert F Kennedy Jr\u2019s 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\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1054,540,2974,37,4816,4818,515,177,789,2324],"class_list":{"0":"post-48603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-address","9":"tag-americans","10":"tag-concerns","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-jrs","13":"tag-kennedy","14":"tag-podcast","15":"tag-public","16":"tag-rfk","17":"tag-robert"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}