Robert F. Influencer Jr. Is Selling Politics, Not Health

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In branding, marketing, and advertising, imagery is everything. It’s not just what you say that matters. It’s just as important what shows up on the screen and what the people who see it are meant to feel. The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement — along with its leader, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — understands this principle and is using it to influence the American public politically.

What MAHA’s Imagery Is Meant to Evoke

If you have ever watched a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertisement, you know MAHA’s formula. DTC pharmaceutical ads typically show a picture of a happy, healthy consumer, enjoying something like a convertible drive along the coast or a meal with a loved one. The voice-over never explicitly promises that life, but the words don’t need to. Because the image does.

As evidenced by imagery of Secretary Kennedy himself, MAHA is using the same template.

In one viral video we see Kennedy sitting working out in jeans in a sauna, shirtless, projecting a level of fitness that would be impressive for most Americans, especially an aging one with a history of drug abuse and habits that typically lead to ill health.

For Americans struggling with their own health and well-being, the secretary’s physique may be enticing, but it is also misleading.

As a physician who is board-certified in emergency and lifestyle medicine, I can tell you Secretary Kennedy’s sweat-soaked sauna sessions are not a broadly advisable strategy for health, particularly for all senior citizens. Heat stress, dehydration, and cardiovascular strain are not trivial considerations.

But again, the specifics of the path to health are not the point. The image is. The video is meant to create an association and correlation, not clinical causation.

MAHA Is Not a Public Health Strategy

We shouldn’t be confused — MAHA is not a public health strategy. If it were, it would not come alongside plans to underfund care or undermine confidence in science and proven treatments. Its goal would be to move every American toward evidence-based public health practices.

Rather, MAHA is a highly disciplined political and omnichannel marketing strategy seemingly designed to engage and energize specific segments of the public to expand a voting coalition for Trump. Its strategies include digital marketing, social and print media, text messaging, TV ads, and now, a podcast that will feature Secretary Kennedy telling “the truth, especially when it’s uncomfortable.”

But we know Secretary Kennedy isn’t going to be truth-telling. Little of what he says or does is rooted in science; he instead sits in the realm of conspiracy theories, correlations, and conjecture. Secretary Kennedy will continue to amplify distrust in science and institutions. His recent statement on X is case-in-point: “Many of us have come to the conclusion that [the] government actually lies to us.”

The podcast is just another vehicle to sell pseudoscience and expand his following.

MAHA’s Audience

MAHA’s audience is not the American public writ large, however. Its audience is two voting blocs: one, traditional Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters, and two, a small but influential voting bloc, willing to support Trump in the name of “health.” MAGA paired with MAHA expands the Trump coalition and employs a group of influencers to keep them engaged and politically active. MAHA (and Kennedy more specifically) engages both groups, tapping into their grievances, fears, and, more importantly, their networks.

The targeting of this audience is why MAHA extols the past — why its messaging alludes to something that has been lost in our healthcare system. That story is a compelling one, particularly for Americans who feel left behind by economic or cultural shifts. The rhetoric also happens to align with and reinforce President Trump’s “narrative of persecution.”

When people feel like a system is not working for them, they begin to look elsewhere for answers, even if those answers are false.

While public health information should be disseminated through multiple media channels, MAHA’s real intent appears to be engaging a disaffected political class. Indeed, MAHA’s marketing resembles that of a political campaign, aiming to connect with small subgroups of political supporters and fence-sitters across multiple channels to broaden a political coalition.

Distrust of the U.S. healthcare system did not emerge in a vacuum. Through high costs, eroding access, widening disparities in opportunity, and a lack of marketplace transparency, it has earned its reputation of being untrustworthy. But just because MAHA has tapped into deserved anxiety, that doesn’t mean their solutions to healthcare problems are the right ones — or based in fact.

MAHA’s End Goal: Resonance Over Rigor

Over the years, we have seen a steady stream of influencers who built enormous followings by presenting an aspirational image — lean, muscular, energetic — and then tied that image to a set of products or practices. The fine print — the genetics, the variability, the lack of evidence — was ignored because the image was so appealing.

Sometimes these products were benign. Sometimes they were ineffective. Occasionally, they were harmful. What they had in common was the implied promise that if you did what they did, if you took what they took, you could look like them.

With Secretary Kennedy, the country now has an influencer-in-chief running our health department. And that’s precisely why we should worry.

The practices he seemingly supports, such as avoiding vaccines, rejecting established medical guidance, and embracing unregulated supplements or fringe dietary approaches, go beyond lifestyle tweaks. They will erode public health.

What is particularly striking about the MAHA approach is the selective skepticism embedded in the movement. There is sharp criticism of pharmaceutical companies and direct-to-consumer drug advertising, some of which is warranted.

But MAHA does not apply the same level of scrutiny to the parallel ecosystem of wellness products that exist outside the regulatory framework. Supplements, peptides, protein regimens, and “natural” interventions are all aggressively marketed by the MAHA movement, even though they come with far less evidence and far fewer safeguards than drug interventions. We never hear that “natural” usually means “unregulated.” We rarely hear about potential side effects or interactions.

Marketing has long been a part of our healthcare system, but up until now, there has been a counterbalance in the form of clinical evidence, regulatory oversight, and professional standards. MAHA seems intent on undermining those very constraints, so vulnerable citizens do not ask about the absence of evidence regarding the solutions it is selling.

What we are seeing with MAHA is not a blueprint for a better system. It is a coordinated campaign that exploits real problems and pain under the guise of “health” to advance a specific political narrative and consolidate power. If MAHA and Secretary Kennedy are going to use marketing and political tactics to move vulnerable voters, we in the medical community must fight back.

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