The day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Donald Trump for president, both politicians promised to investigate chronic health issues and corruption within America’s health and food ecosystem. Watching Trump and Kennedy’s remarks, health and wellness influencer Courtney Swan says she “full blown sobbed.”
“Oh God, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” Swan shared in a phone interview with The Daily Wire. “I have been waiting my entire adult voting life for a presidential candidate to acknowledge how sick our country is.”
Swan, whose “realfoodology” Instagram account has almost 400,000 followers, isn’t the only one who feels this way. The people behind similarly-themed accounts told The Daily Wire that their followers are very interested in the Trump-Kennedy alliance, specifically the duo’s pledge to fix America’s food problem.
This isn’t the MAGA-hat-wearing crowd typically drawn to Trump: their main interests are health, wellness, and nutrition. Many of them have never voted Republican in their lives. But something changed during the pandemic, the influencers who spoke with The Daily Wire shared. Health officials discouraged exercise, encouraged masks, and mandated vaccines — and Americans didn’t like it.
Kennedy drew these newly-skeptical Americans in with his frank condemnation of seed oils and processed foods, and his disgust for Big Food and Big Pharma. Then he dropped out and endorsed Trump, leaving these voters — many of whom never had a home in either major party — wondering if the Diet Coke-swilling, McDonald’s loving former president could be the leader they’ve been waiting for.
“I’ve been registered independent pretty much my whole life,” said Iliriana Balaj, founder and CEO of the “low tox” shop, LiveHealthillie, and the owner of the “healthillie” Instagram account. “This is probably the first year where someone is finally talking about what America really needs right now: real health and wellness and bringing down the biggest corporations that have monopolized everything from food to products that we use every single day.”
Balaj argues that female voters in particular could be drawn to a candidate who makes health and wellness a part of their campaign.
“Women are the ones buying the food and they’re in the supermarkets every single day…they’re the ones at the supermarket reading labels and they’re the ones being marketed,” she explained.
Whether or not it comes up in Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump seems more than willing to expand the GOP’s famous “Big Tent” to include these “crunchy” voters. He’s even got a new slogan, just for them: “Make America Healthy Again.”
Putting Our Country At Risk
Chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and the “leading drivers of the nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs.” Close to 30% of American teens are prediabetic, more than 18% of young adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and cancer rates among young people are rising.
