The Free Press
From the day I was born, I’ve had a chronic disease. It’s called primary ciliary dyskinesia, and it comes from a genetic mutation that keeps the cilia—the little hairs—in my airways from moving, allowing mucus to build up in my lungs. It means I get pneumonia frequently, and the possibility of a future double lung transplant has been hanging over me since I was diagnosed at the age of 15. Like any genetic mutation, mine is not curable.
In America, your experience of illness is always shaped by your background: In my case, I was raised by my mom in a working-class family in Missouri. I wanted to go to college, but after I was diagnosed, I was so anxious about how I would be able to afford health insurance while attending, it used to keep me up at night. Because I had a preexisting condition, the price tag would be almost $1,000 a month. My dad thought it would be better for me to work as a receptionist straight out of high school, so I’d be covered. Luckily, the Affordable Care Act passed in the nick of time, creating a path for me to go to school and become a first-generation graduate.
But in adulthood, especially since living in coastal areas like New York and California, I’ve encountered people who’ll suggest I “try eating a keto diet” as it “could change my cells on a molecular level.” I even crossed paths with one very sweet man—a Democratic donor—who, meaning well, would bring me various herbs that he had grown himself, because he claimed they would clear my lungs. I drank a few bags of tea, but didn’t notice any difference.
Then there were the people who would casually say that “taking antibiotics is bad”: They really infuriated me. Antibiotics have saved my life! I am on them almost half the year. But there have always been those who see my disease as something that should be remedied without medications.
And people like this have now gathered under the banner of an influential political movement you’ve probably heard a lot about recently. It’s called Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA.
Last week, I traveled to D.C. for President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and while I was there, I watched Bari Weiss discuss America’s health problems with three leaders of the MAHA movement: Calley Means, Vani Hari, and Jillian Michaels. I agreed with a lot of what they said. All three of them vehemently protest the fact that our food industry profits from getting Americans hooked on stuff that’s terrible for us, for instance. They’re horrified that both political parties are accepting millions in donations from Big Food and Big Pharma. And, like Trump, they’re willing to bluntly tell the American people: We’re getting screwed.
Hari noted that “American companies are using better, safer ingredients in the products they sell overseas, while selling that same product in the U.S. with more toxic, more poisonous ingredients,” while Means complained that “President Biden put out a 400-page document that said ultra-processed food is healthy for kids. It said 2-year-olds can eat added sugar.” I am outraged by these facts.
And on paper, I should align with these three panelists. Like the leader of the MAHA movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we are all Trump converts who have been shut out by the Democratic Party because we feel it has been corrupted. As I wrote in my last piece for The Free Press, I’ve raised at least $50 million for the party, but over the last couple of years, I’ve watched in horror as it has drifted further and further from the working-class base they claimed to champion, prioritizing elites.
But as I listened to the MAHA panel, I couldn’t escape the overwhelming feeling that, when they start talking about solutions, their attitudes reveal a fundamental disconnect from regular people—people like my family and friends back home in deep-red Missouri. People like me.
When the topic of mental health came up, Hari suggested: “If people are stressed or anxious because of their job, well then, they should quit their job!” This is seen as a viable alternative to taking SSRIs and anxiety medications. But regular people can’t just quit their jobs! Thirty percent of American households live paycheck to paycheck, and not having health insurance would likely make these people even more anxious and stressed.
Watch Vani Hari urge anxious workers to quit their jobs:
And when the topic of microwaves came up, I started feeling like I was back in the elite rooms of the Democratic Party. The advice was to ditch them. What working-class family has time for that?! In between taking me to doctors’ offices and trying to hold down a full-time job—so that I would have health insurance and we’d have a roof over our heads—my mom fed me a lot of microwavable mac and cheese. I’m sure many in MAHA’s more rarefied circles would squirm at this fact. Democratic elites certainly disapproved when I told them about my upbringing. A U.S. Senate candidate once made fun of me on a call, in front of other consultants, because I told her I ate a lot of Happy Meals as a kid. But my mom was too exhausted at the end of the day to cook a fresh, balanced meal—so she fed me what she had time to feed me.
The list of MAHA recommendations that are completely impractical for working families goes on. Because the average American consumes three tablespoons of seed oils a day, some suggest grass-fed ghee as an alternative option. Regular ghee isn’t even sold in the grocery stores in small-town Missouri, much less the grass-fed variety. Others insist it’s essential to run all drinking water through a reverse osmosis water filter, to remove toxins. These machines can cost $400. But like the people who told me to eat keto to cure my incurable disease, a portion of the MAHA movement tells Americans: Just spend a lot of time and money perfecting your diet, and you’ll be fine!
But I still support the principles of MAHA, because families like mine do need help becoming healthier. Having a low income is a risk factor for multiple illnesses, including obesity. I’ve seen my relatives back home become increasingly sick as time has passed. Relatives like my uncle, who has been a construction worker most of his life, and my aunt, who has been a stay-at-home mom to two kids. He has diabetes and high cholesterol; my aunt, in her mid-fifties, was recently diagnosed with fatty liver disease and diabetes. Just yesterday, she told me her doctor was finally able to get insurance to pay for Mounjaro, a medication similar to Ozempic—but it took her liver almost failing to get there.
Her doctor has been telling her for years to modulate her diet if she wants to avoid going on medication for life. But she lives in one of America’s “food deserts,” a town with limited access to healthy, affordable food, where populations are 30 percent more likely to be obese. To eat produce that hasn’t been doused in pesticides would require driving 45 minutes round trip to the closest Whole Foods, with fewer ultra-processed options than the same Walmart where my aunt and uncle have been shopping for 30 years—because it’s nearby, and because my cousin works there, so he can get them a discount. Also, and maybe ironically, they don’t love the idea of eating healthier. Although my uncle is sympathetic to other parts of the MAHA movement—he’s skeptical of vaccines—I know he would be very angry about any changes to his favorite drink, Big Red, which contains Red No. 40, an artificial dye spurned by MAHA.
It’s because Americans need help getting healthier that I’m rooting for RFK Jr.’s confirmation this week, even though some people in the MAHA movement are infuriatingly out of touch with ordinary Americans. Kennedy is planning to change the way food is made at a systemic level—for instance, by removing high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes and sweeteners that have been shown to have major health consequences. In doing so, he’d bring American foods closer to European standards. And instead of demanding that time-pressed Americans spend half their lives working out how to be healthier, he wants to do the work for them, which could be game-changing for families like mine in Missouri. It would mean they could go to the grocery store and shop for whatever they needed, without being expected to avoid toxins themselves.
I want RFK Jr. to succeed, but I’m worried that certain impulses within the MAHA movement could eventually alienate working-class people. The Republican Party these days has become a pretty big tent, and my experience has been that they are much more accepting, open, and inclusive to new ideas than the experiences I had in my former life as a Democratic campaign operative. But some of the MAHA champions remind me of the people who pushed me away from the modern Democratic Party—by refusing to acknowledge the daily struggles of ordinary Americans.
An unexpected coalition of nutritionists, moms, shamans, longevity experts, and Bobby Kennedy has changed American culture and politics. This week on Honestly, Bari Weiss explores the rise of the MAHA movement with Calley Means, Jillian Michaels, and Vani Hari. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: