RFK Jr. is in his influencer era

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is entering his influencer era as US health secretary.

Last week brought two telling developments that appear to mark a new phase of Kennedy’s leadership at the US Department of Health and Human Services. First, Kennedy launched The Secretary Kennedy Podcast with an inaugural episode focused on his efforts to overhaul the country’s food supply. And second, President Donald Trump nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz, a conspicuously conventional public health official, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Kennedy.

Those moves might seem contradictory, but they actually signal a new role for Kennedy within the Trump administration. The latter move is especially telling. When Kennedy was promising to dismantle the medical establishment that he blamed for so many of America’s health problems, overhauling the CDC was at the top of the list. And during his first year as health secretary, hundreds of CDC employees have been laid off. Four leaders have come and gone in a matter of months — one after a high-profile clash with Kennedy. It has been an agency in crisis.

But with the nomination of Schwartz, who has notably been an advocate for routine vaccinations in the past, to lead the CDC, Kennedy looks increasingly sidelined on policy by the White House. 

Still, they don’t want him totally out of the public’s eye — not when Republicans are counting on Make America Healthy Again voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Instead, Kennedy’s job description now looks more like health influencer-in-chief, a podcast host with an undeniably enormous platform but not the policymaking sway that he once sought.

The White House has been disempowering RFK Jr.

After promising during the presidential campaign to let Kennedy “go wild” on health, Trump and his team have instead started to hem Kennedy in.

It starts with an issue that has been a priority for Kennedy for decades: pesticides. Trump recently decided to expand the use of the pesticide glyphosate, a chemical that Kennedy had called out for its potential negative health effects in his initial Make America Healthy Again report. For the past year, Kenendy has been fighting a losing battle against Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, who is friendly to the corporate interests that the health secretary decries. Zeldin has rolled back a broad range of environmental regulations that were implemented by the Biden administration to protect people’s health.

And even on the issues where he’s had more freedom to act, Kennedy has been constrained.  He has scaled back his plan for a baby formula overhaul after opposition from the industry, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Despite making big promises to crack down on the use of antidepressants and statins, action has failed to materialize, at least so far. After Kennedy’s FDA initially refused to review a new universal flu vaccine from the mRNA developer Moderna, it quickly backtracked in the face of public and industry backlash.

Even the vaccine guidance changes he’s overseen, a clear example of Kenendy’s personal agenda at work, have run into practical limits. The health policy think tank KFF recently reported that more than half of US states are now abiding by their own vaccine recommendations, not the CDC’s. The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups have aggressively pushed their alternatives. Kennedy’s actions have been criticized even by Senate health committee chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

Amid all the turmoil, several of Kennedy’s close allies left their administration posts earlier this year. And now, Schwartz, who served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term, is set to take over the CDC.

The whisper circuit in Washington, DC portrayed the move as a rebuke of Kennedy’s agenda. As Kennedy has taken contentious high-profile action on vaccines, he has grown less popular, as poll after poll has shown. A January YouGov survey found 34 percent of Americans approved of his nutrition policies as health secretary, while 44 percent disapproved. For vaccines, the data is similar: 33 percent approve of Kennedy’s policies and 46 percent disapprove.

“We just need someone who’s not crazy,” an anonymous White House official told CNN of the Schwartz nomination, echoing commentary in the New York Times. 

Some of Kennedy’s most vocal supporters were disappointed by the CDC pick — but it’s moving ahead anyway. The signal seems clear; MAHA isn’t in charge anymore.

The White House wants Kennedy’s supporters to stay MAGA

Even as his decision-making power diminishes, it appears Kennedy still has a role to play for the White House: podcast host and wellness influencer. 

It is, in a way, a more natural role for Kennedy than policy heavyweight, despite his last name. He hosted a podcast during his own presidential run in 2024. He has gone viral for weightlifting videos and other social media stunts. He’s always had a knack for getting attention; this is the same man who once served 30 days in prison for protesting US military bombing exercises in Puerto Rico. 

Heading into the midterm elections, Trump may not want Kennedy attracting headlines for his wackier policy prescriptions, but he does want voters who are attracted to those ideas. Letting Kennedy launch a podcast seems like a way to keep the US health secretary engaged with the MAGA base, even as Schwartz takes over the CDC. Kennedy has seen his popularity take a hit while in office, but his personal approval rating remains higher than Trump’s.

And it seems telling that the first episode of his podcast focused on the issue where Kennedy has perhaps enjoyed the most bipartisan support: food. “We need to change our diet, or we’re going to lose our country,” he said in his opening preamble.

In a matter of moments, Kennedy was weaving his telltale conspiratorial rhetoric — ”the government has been lying to us for 50 years” — with the benefits of eating whole foods and touting the administration’s efforts to address the issue. His guest, former British Royal Navy member and chef Robert Irvine, personifies the image of masculine wellness that Kennedy himself has tried to cultivate in recent years. After the pair discussed how they might steer people toward more healthy foods at a lower cost based on Irvine’s own attempts to improve military food offerings, the guest leaned into the idea of Kennedy as a transformational figure for the nation’s health as the episode wound down.

“Imagine the history books, when somebody picks up a history book and says, this is what RFK Jr. did,” Irvine said. As he signed off, he implored Kennedy to “keep shaking the tree.”

Now, whether this bet on Kennedy’s podcast pays off remains to be seen. As of Monday morning, The Secretary Kennedy Podcast ranked 58 among the health and fitness shows on Apple Podcasts.

The alliance between Kennedy — scion of a Democratic dynasty — and Trump has been a strange one, despite their shared skepticism of medical experts. It’s been a rocky road so far, but both sides seem intent on squeezing a little more out of it — a big platform for Kennedy and a critical bloc of voters for Trump — before it ends.