How the Make America Healthy Again movement swung from RFK Jr. to Trump

Health influencer Calley Means helped orchestrate the shotgun marriage of MAGA and MAHA supporters.

Calley Means says it was the day Donald Trump was almost assassinated last summer that made everything crystalize for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Means, an influencer and activist leader in the exploding clean food and health space, had become close with Kennedy over their common cause against the food and pharmaceutical industries. He says the obvious connection both he and Kennedy made, watching what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, was to the history-altering assassinations of Kennedy’s father and uncle. But it turned into more. “I felt the spiritual urge and need to call Bobby and suggest to him that he should call President Trump, and he was thinking the same thing,” Means recalled to CNN. “I was able to facilitate that conversation that night and from my small vantage point saw a real bond developed between the two men, not about politics at all, but about this issue of why kids are getting so sick.” Kennedy’s own 2024 presidential campaign didn’t take off. The Democrat-turned-independent did still have support from some who bought into debunked conspiracies and scientifically specious claims about childhood vaccines. Yet many of his now loyal supporters were not on the political fringe, but rather people – especially parents – drawn to his crusade against chemicals in food and the government that allows it. “I was convinced through our experience and through meeting people that this was a real issue,” Means said. “Clearly Bobby Kennedy is resonating, but the two leading candidates weren’t talking about the issue enough.”