Donald Trump fills his plane with his favorite fast food despite it being at odds with his administration’s “Make America Health Again” agenda, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“When you get on his airplane, it’s just boxes and boxes of McDonald’s,” Kennedy said on an episode of the Net Positive with John Crist podcast released to YouTube Wednesday.
Trump’s love of McDonald’s is well-known. Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters revealed the president’s go-to order on the Chamber, Changes & Conversations podcast last October: “He had hot fries waiting for him from McDonald’s…Then he had a Filet-O-Fish, a Quarter Pounder, a Big Mac and I think he combined two of them.”
When he was running for president in 2024, he hosted a campaign event at one of the fast food locations in Pennsylvania, where he worked as a fry attendant.
Kennedy was pictured on Trump’s private plane with a tray of McDonald’s shortly after the then-president-elect tapped him to lead the Health and Human Services Department.
open image in galleryIn the photo, Trump is all smiles as he sits in front of a table filled with fast food surrounded by Kennedy, tech billionaire Elon Musk, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who was holding a box of fries.
“Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW,” Donald Trump Jr. posted on X in November 2024, alongside the photo.
The MAHA movement, led by Kennedy as health secretary, scrutinizes ultra-processed foods. HHS recently announced food policy reforms that target the issue.
In an effort to better see what substances are entering the food supply, the Food and Drug Administration has issued a proposed rule requiring manufacturers to notify the agency when they conclude that the use of a substance added to food is “Generally Recognized as Safe.”
HHS and the Department of Agriculture also have submitted the federal government’s first proposed definition of ultra-processed food for final review. A definition would keep research on the link between ultra-processed foods and chronic diseases more consistent, HHS explained.
open image in gallery“Nearly 60% of the American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods, and childhood obesity now affects more than one in five American children,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday. “We cannot reverse America’s chronic disease epidemic without transforming our food system.”
Crist asked Kennedy on his podcast if he ever quietly tells Trump that having loads of junk food on his plane isn’t helping the MAHA movement. “I’m not a scold,” Kennedy replied.
Kennedy has been more vocal about his opinion of Trump’s diet in the past.
“The stuff that he eats is really bad,” he said on The Joe Polish Show in November 2024.
“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is like just poison,” he said. “You don’t have the choice; you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s when you’re lucky, and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”