A new poll has found that almost half of the people who identify with the Make America Healthy Again movement believe that President Donald Trump’s administration has not done enough to meet their goals.
Politico’s latest survey revealed that 47 percent of MAHA’s members are not happy with Trump, while 41 percent of people who voted for the president but do not necessarily consider health their primary area of interest also believe he has not done enough to address concerns about issues like vaccines, pesticides, and junk food.
More worryingly for the president, looking ahead to November’s midterms, many poll respondents told the outlet they regard Democrats as better placed to meet their priorities and improve American health than Republicans, who, they said, are more likely to be influenced by industry lobbyists.
The prospect of an already loose coalition of interest groups switching its support towards Democratic candidates at the midterms was also raised last month by Tony Lyons, president of the MAHA Action group.
Lyons said in a leaked memo last month that the Republican Party was only “renting MAHA voters” by installing their champion, Robert F Kennedy Jr., as health secretary and would not be able to “purchase” them.
A decision that enabled the chemical giant Bayer to increase production of its weed killer Roundup last month – a compromise in the interest of agricultural stability, the administration said – particularly incensed the MAHA movement, which has repeatedly argued that such glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer.
“We’re not even sure that we even have a path forward in this administration when it comes to pesticides, because it’s very clear that they are entirely owned by Bayer and the chemical companies,” said influencer Kelly Ryerson, AKA Glyphosate Girl, who has publicly backed RFK Jr.
In response to a social media post by the secretary attempting to explain a decision he might have been expected to oppose, another MAHA activist, Zen Honeycutt, told him: “We love you Bobby but this administration needs to keep their word.”
“If there is a big plan, a big MAHA-style plan to move in the direction of detoxifying agriculture from these chemicals, where is it?” asked veteran environmentalist Ken Cook. “What I’m seeing here is a very aggressive effort to try and hang onto MAHA principles even as, at every turn, you betray them.”
The administration’s inclination towards deregulation and support for policies contrary to MAHA’s concerns, like restricting abortion access, necessary to keep the Christian right onside, has also created areas of conflict.
But it has made some moves that have pleased the movement, such as cutting down on artificial dyes in food and restricting junk food purchases as part of the federal nutrition program.
Republican policy adviser Abby McCloskey warned her party that officials were “squandering their MAHA moment.”
“The MAHA movement in the [2024] campaign cycle started with a lot of energy, and did create more energy for these types of issues that previously wouldn’t have been associated with the GOP,” she said.
“Since then, I think the energy has trickled off from the perspective of, what is the federal government going to do about this?”
Democratic strategist Anjan Mukherjee has meanwhile said he expects more left-leaning candidates to emphasize to MAHA supporters “how this administration has failed them” during the midterms.
“What this administration has shown to them over and over again is that they’re only interested in enriching themselves and putting more money into the pockets of the wealthy,” he said.
Despite the deep unpopularity of the ongoing Iran war, which appears to be causing Trump’s support to collapse, the president himself has insisted the GOP will triumph, declaring brashly last week: “We’ll have bigger majorities in the House and Senate than we do today.”
Trump uncharacteristically chose to dodge the annual CPAC conference in Texas over the weekend, where conservative division over the conflict was strongly in evidence, but Kennedy did make an appearance.
The secretary apologized for his past rejection of the president, telling his audience: “I basically drank the Kool-Aid that he was this bombastic narcissist who didn’t read books, was ill-informed.”
He went on to say he considered Trump unusually empathetic because he was willing to acknowledge Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine.
“You will not hear any Democrat ever talk about that,” Kennedy said. “And he talks about the Russian kids who are dying. He gets the reports every week, and they make a huge impression on him about the death rate.”
He also praised Trump for accurately drawing a map of the Middle East on the back of a placemat, which, the secretary said, “challenged a lot of the assumptions I had been told about him.”
