Dem
53
Ties
3
GOP
44
Donald Trump struck a bargain with Robert Kennedy Jr., basically "I'll give you HHS if you tell MAHA I am their candidate." It was, very probably, a shrewd political move. Certainly, it added some votes the Republican column, and Trump did win the election. But these days, MAHA is not happy with either one of their alleged champions.
There are a couple of things that have rankled the MAHA crowd, but the big one right now is mRNA vaccines. These are the cutting edge when it comes to immunology. However, MAHA is convinced that they are the devil's work, and they are not content to merely take a pass themselves. No, they want mRNA vaccines to be wiped from the face of planet Earth, so that nobody can get them. And they are furious that Kennedy and Trump have not made that happen.
Consequently, yesterday 100 MAHA types—most of them well-known within the movement, and some of them, like Tucker Carlson and Marge Greene, also known more widely—signed and published an Open Letter to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump. It's 8 single-spaced pages of crazypantsery, but here's the gist, helpfully labeled "Executive Summary":
As influential leaders within the MAHA and health freedom movements, we are writing to object to policies under your oversight related to the mRNA platform, and to call you to act on our policy goals.
While the centerpiece of the MAHA and health freedom agenda has been removal of mRNA shots, you have failed to take decisive action on this front despite overwhelming credible evidence to the harm of this technology. Instead, your policies related to mRNA technology are neutered and self-defeating, putting pregnant women and children at risk, misleading parents and eroding their rights, and failing to help those harmed by vaccines.
If you continue to ignore our central issue of removing the mRNA platform, the MAHA and health freedom movements will withdraw their support of you, and you will face the political consequences.
Thereafter, it gets both really boring and really infuriating at the same time.
Initially, we decided to write up this news to make a general political point. In politics, if you can find a concentrated group of single-issue voters (Second Amendment, anti-choice, pro-Israel, etc.), it's very tempting to throw them a bone or two, in hopes of bringing them into the tent. That's exactly what Trump was doing when he made his deal with Kennedy; Trump himself doesn't care about MAHA's agenda, and he certainly isn't interested in getting rid of vaccines. If he did that, then he wouldn't be able to get vaccinated himself, and to protect the government's most valuable asset (in his view).
The problem here is that MAHA isn't really single-issue. It's more like 20 issues, and if a politician is wrong on any one of them, it's usually a dealbreaker. Many of them are also extremely unreasonable and kind of nutty. If you build your political coalition with one of them as the foundation, you're building on a house of sand. And as you pander to them, you end up saying things that alienate voters who don't think mRNA vaccines are wicked and evil, and who might like to get the kiddies vaccinated, so they don't, say, die of COVID.
So, the general political point is that MAHA just isn't worth it, for either political party. They are proving that right now—they got to control HHS, and got some of their loony ideas implemented, and it wasn't enough. Better to ignore them, and if they want to waste their votes on whoever the "woo" candidate is (say, Marianne Williamson), then so be it.
As we were writing this, however, it occurred to us that it also fits in with the leitmotif of the week. If you're looking for evidence that Donald Trump's coalition is fraying, well, MAHA is part of his coalition, and they are definitely thinking twice about him. (Z)