Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being sidelined by the White House as a rift emerges between the MAHA and MAGA movements, a new report alleges.
President Donald Trump has already pulled his nomination for Kennedy’s pick for Surgeon General, Casey Means, and is distancing himself from his controversial anti-vaccine Health and Human Services secretary, sources tell CNN.
Kennedy, the de facto leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement, reportedly had “little role” in Trump’s new Surgeon General appointee, Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and Fox News contributor who has long criticized Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stances.
CNN writes that Trump is “shortening the leash” and no longer letting Kennedy “go wild” at HHS, a decision that comes as the president’s approval rating continues to tumble with November’s midterms on the horizon.
Despite rumors of a rift, there has been no indication that Kennedy is at serious risk of being fired after Trump dumped former Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem this spring.
Trump’s longtime biographer, Michael Wolff, told the Inside Trump’s Head podcast on Saturday that Kennedy will likely not be axed because the White House cannot afford to alienate the MAHA base that he brought into Trump’s coalition.
“They are now stuck with RFK Jr. and the anti-vax face,” Wolff said of the White House. “Now what I’m hearing is that they’re trying to get rid of him, and they are trying to get him, the way this was put to me, they are trying to get him to go.”
He added, “They don’t want to fire him because the MAHA constituency is significant, they feel, to the Trump base. So they want him to go away, but not go away mad.”
The White House may achieve this goal by quietly curbing Kennedy’s influence.
Kennedy revealed last week that the president did not seek his input when he was deciding on the next CDC director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, who has a more conventional medical background than Kennedy’s allies. Her appointment came as polling showed that the administration’s current vaccine messaging under Kennedy is too polarizing, The Washington Post reports.
Vaccines are not the only pressure point. Trump also sided with major agricultural corporations by seeking to accelerate domestic production of a controversial weedkiller—something Kennedy and MAHA activists oppose.
Kennedy’s waning influence has “raised fears among Kennedy’s close allies that he is being marginalized inside the administration,” CNN writes.
Reached by email, White House spokesman Kush Desai said that serving the MAHA movement remains a priority for Trump.
“Making America Healthy Again has been a Day One priority for President Trump, and Secretary Kennedy continues to play a central role in the Trump administration’s whole-of-government effort to deliver on the President’s MAHA agenda,” he said. “With historic progress already made on overhauling our food supply and reducing healthcare costs, the Administration will continue to deliver and tout MAHA victories for the American people.”
Reached for comment, HHS referred the Beast to the White House.
CNN reports that tensions between MAHA and MAGA have spilled into the literal White House.
Trump hosted MAHA influencers in the Oval Office last month in an effort to ease tensions that stemmed from Trump boosting the weedkiller glyphosate.
Alex Clark, a TPUSA podcaster and top MAHA activist, told CNN that he pressed Trump to his face about Means’ stalling confirmation battle. While Trump is said to have responded “enthusiastically” in the moment, the president went on to pull Means’ nomination weeks later and tapped Saphier, a critic of Kennedy.
Barrett Marson, an Arizona GOP strategist, says the White House may lose the MAHA coalition entirely if it is not careful.
“I think the right candidate, either a Democrat or Republican, could win MAHA voters with a message that they would want to hear,” he told CNN.
Others on the right are not convinced the MAHA movement is powerful enough to make a difference either way.
“I hate to say it, but I think they’re a little bit overrated,” one Trump adviser said of MAHA, according to CNN. “To some extent, MAHA has always been a paper tiger.”
