Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with President-elect Donald Trump for a meal of McDonald's fast food — just days after publicly calling it "just poison."
Kennedy — Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — was photographed smiling weakly as he held up a burger in its carton at a table on Trump's private plane.
The anti-vaccine activist and "Make America Healthy Again" sloganeer was seated across from billionaire Elon Musk and next to Donald Trump Jr., with House Speaker Mike Johnson standing behind, apparently after attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in New York City on Saturday.
Both Trumps sported wide grins when Margo Martin, deputy communications director for the elder Trump's campaign, snapped a shot of the group before posting it on social media early Sunday morning.
Donald Trump Jr. later reposted the image along with a joke that seemed to be aimed squarely at Kennedy.
"Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW," he wrote.
Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LLzr5S9ugf
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 17, 2024
On Tuesday, Kennedy openly criticized the dietary habits of his future boss, telling podcaster Joe Polish, "The stuff that he eats is really, like bad," the Daily Beast reported.
"Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is like just poison," Kennedy said. "You have a choice between — 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."
The once and future president's love of McDonald's cuisine is so deep that he put on an apron to cook french fries and hand out drive-thru orders during a campaign stunt in Pennsylvania last month.
One day later, Kennedy called on McDonald's to replace its frying oil — which the company's website says is a blend of non-hydrogenated rapeseed and sunflower oils — with beef fat so its customers won't be "unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils."
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has no formal training in health or nutrition. He has been labeled a "purveyor of health misinformation" by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.
