Health and Human Services Secretary and MAHA architect Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kissed the Republican ring while appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience on Friday, insisting that the GOP are fighting the good fight.
The HHS boss attempted to persuade host Joe Rogan that President Donald Trump is still worthy of the podcaster’s support. After endorsing Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Rogan has become more critical of him in the past year. He has slammed the Trump administration’s immigration policies and its approach to the Epstein files.
During his appearance on the podcast, Kennedy discussed how “inspiring” it was to work with Republicans in the Trump administration as a former lifelong Democrat. He noted that he had not previously spent time with conservatives and had his expectations exceeded once he began working under Trump.
“I always imagined that Republicans would get together and they’d be thinking about ‘How do we screw the poor?’ and ‘How do we reduce the tax on the rich?’” Kennedy told Rogan. “And they’re just narrowly focused on ‘How do we solve these big problems and how do we make our country work?’”
He further praised Republicans’ “idealism” and “competence” within the White House and his agency. This comes months after Kennedy faced an internal revolt at HHS by staffers who accused him of putting Americans’ lives at risk with his anti-vaccine agenda.
While Kennedy waxes poetic about the GOP’s idealism, the harsh realities that everyday Americans face have become difficult to ignore. Trump has seen his approval ratings nosedive due to his handling of inflation. His disapproval rating hit 60% by the end of February, the highest since the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Despite Kennedy’s praise of Trump and Republicans for not trying to “screw the poor”, 66% of Americans said Trump’s policies were increasing prices. Some people have even resorted to selling plasma to make ends meet.
The president previously called the affordability crisis a “hoax.” During the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump incorrectly stated that beef prices were decreasing. His aides doubled down on this claim when confronted with its inaccuracy, stating that “prices of many everyday essentials have fallen or are on the right trajectory.”
Kennedy defended the Trump administration numerous times on Rogan’s podcast about a variety of issues. Despite being a notorious health nut, he excused the president’s junk food habits, saying Trump only eats that way when traveling.
“When he’s on the road, he eats like fast food because he trusts it,” Kennedy said. “He doesn’t want to—he doesn’t want to eat in some local place where, you know, he gets food poisoning or something. But when he’s at home, at the White House, or Mar-a-Lago, it is the, you know, it’s all, like, locally sourced, incredible food.”
When Rogan asked Kennedy to weigh in on the administration’s immigration crackdown, the HHS secretary dismissed recent coverage of federal agents’ brutality in Minneapolis.
“Nobody is happy with the way that things have looked, particularly in Minnesota, but a lot of it is because of this capacity of the press to take ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ and amplify it into public outrage and set up a situation,” Kennedy claimed.
