It seems Donald Trump’s quest to “make America healthy again” has finished before it even started, after the president-elect was seen eating McDonald’s with his newly-nominated Health and Human Services secretary, RFK Jr.
The pair were spotted eating what looked to be a serving of Big Macs and fries in a photo shared to Trump’s social media. Also pictured was fellow Trump loyalist Elon Musk — who will co-lead a government efficiency program in Trump’s administration — as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson. “Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW,” Trump wrote in the image’s caption, which showed the MAGA inner-circle dining on “Trump Force One.”
While we’ve long known of Trump’s affinity for McDonald’s — having reportedly spent hundreds of dollars at the chain during his first term and also making a presidential campaign stop at a restaurant last month — the image is particularly surprising for RFK Jr. Not only does eating at a fast food chain seem to fly in the face of someone who hopes to be the health secretary (couldn’t he have at least ordered a salad? A wrap, even?), it also contradicts comments RFK Jr. himself has made.
Speaking of Trump’s diet while appearing on a podcast last week, the former independent candidate — who dropped out of the race to endorse Trump in August — said the “stuff [Trump] eats is really, like, bad.” RFK Jr. said (per Rolling Stone) that “campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison.” The poison in question, according to RFK Jr., is the “choice between… either KFC or Big Macs,” since “the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”
Perhaps this aversion to fast food is why RFK Jr. looks so awkward while posing with McDonald’s and a Coca-Cola (not even sugar-free, I might add), or perhaps he’s really liked fast food all along and his protests otherwise have been a bunch of nonsense… like his views on fluoride or vaccinations. Understandably, the reaction to the image on social media has been one of disbelief, as users noted the brevity with which RFK Jr.’s plans to make America healthy again seemingly crumbled.
“I’m sorry… this is the alleged ‘Make America Healthy Again’ team, and they’re all having TWO burgers and a large fry from f***ing McDonald’s?,” one X user wrote. “It’s obviously all a scam, but they’re just so blatantly full of shit.” Sharing a similar sentiment, one user noted the hypocrisy of calling for better health standards “ right after I mow down this McDonald’s that I’m busy telling you is poison and wash it down with a bottle of black carbonated sugar.”
Meanwhile, one person quipped that RFK Jr.’s plans as health secretary “lasted less than a Scaramucci,” about Anthony Scaramucci, who was famously Trump’s White House Communications Director for all of ten days. Elsewhere, users took broader aim at what they perceived to be the “scam” that underpins Trump and his team’s whole presidency, saying the McDonald’s image is evidence that they “got trolled” and that Trump “is just rubbing it in your face” with this kind of photo.
“They have no plan except for the grift,” they wrote. “The grift IS the plan.” The photo comes just days after RFK Jr. was put forward as one of many head-scratching choices for Trump’s second-term cabinet, joining a list that includes Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security, and Pete Hegseth as Defence Secretary.