Everyone knows that American kids — and adults — need more exercise. If President Donald Trump’s recent decision to reinvigorate the federal Presidential Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition and reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test helps get more kids moving, as he promises, it would be a welcome step in the right direction. But what we know so far about this reboot — and Trump’s record on fitness — should make us wary of its ability to actually combat the epidemic of sedentariness that contributes to all kinds of health conditions, from obesity to mental illness.
The executive order re-establishes the council, which Trump had renamed during his first term to place “sports” before “fitness,” a subtle choice that apparently prioritizes competitive athletics over recreational exercise. Much of the language of the new order echoes the initiatives of earlier administrations, highlighting issues of obesity and insufficient military preparedness. Most notably, though, the order hits a competitive note, aiming to “reward excellence in physical education” and to develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award, an initiative in keeping with maintaining “America’s global dominance in sports.”
During his first term, Trump famously disdained exercise as a dangerous waste of our ‘nonrechargeable battery’ — invoking a discredited 19th-century theory.
It is worth considering what an unlikely ambassador for fitness Trump is. During his first term, he famously disdained exercise as a dangerous waste of our “nonrechargeable battery” — invoking a discredited 19th-century theory — and is well known for his decidedly unhealthy habits. Back in 2017, I wrote about how Trump was a rare exception in a culture increasingly embracing “wellness” across the political aisle, especially as a sign of personal discipline, success and refinement.
Presidents in both parties had regularly touted their workout routines since the 1960s, after all: think Jimmy Carter jogging, or Ronald Reagan on a Nautilus machine. Wealthy people in the 2010s were increasingly showing off their expensive technical running gear and posting about their boutique fitness classes on new social media sites. But Trump trashed exercise itself as stuck-up and silly, while flaunting an older archetype of affluence: the “fat cat,” eating steak and double servings of dessert, and choosing leisure over exercise except for traditionally masculine sports like football or as a way for women to stay slim.
As a passion for exercise was uncontroversially spreading across American culture, regardless of political affiliation, on a policy level, it was most associated with two Democratic administrations: those of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. During the first Trump administration, obliterating everything Obama-adjacent was a core objective of Trump’s, and shuttering the Let’s Move program, a linchpin of first lady Michelle Obama’s platform, was a natural place to start. Trump officially ended the nutrition program on her birthday, and right-wing supporters crowed that the federal government would no longer be slapping their hands from the cookie jar or moralizing about exercise. (JFK was then so far in the rearview mirror that few people besides historians like me and a few diehards trying to keep his dream alive were talking about the president who had advocated for physical fitness in every school, recreation in public spaces, and the need to emphasize inclusive fitness over exclusive, competitive sport.)
But Americans have a short memory, and by the 2024 election cycle, prioritizing fitness became a natural GOP priority. During the pandemic, gym owners whose businesses were shuttered by Covid policies were at the forefront of the anti-lockdown resistance. Wellness influencers whose all-natural lifestyles had once appeared apolitical, or even left wing, railed against vaccine mandates and Big Pharma. Body positivity embraced by progressives led conservative critics to denounce them as promoting unhealthy behaviors. And liberals like me who dared to point out that some strands of American fitness culture really had been about strengthening white bodies were an easy target for shock jocks who gleefully denounced the libs for claiming even something as innocuous as exercise was racist. (When Donald Jr. came after me with this line of attack after an ill-conceived headline, I received a barrage of messages, including death threats, that the gym was better off without woke feminists anyway.)
In 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., emerged as the perfect person to crystallize these dynamics into a movement — and to soften their harder edges with a backward-looking nostalgia for his uncle’s physical fitness programs, grainy black-and-white footage of which figured in his promotional campaigns and MAHA messaging. In the clip of his announcement of the new initiative he shared to Instagram, Kennedy directly invoked his uncle’s 1960 Sports Illustrated article, “The Soft American,” and thanked Trump for revitalizing this legacy. Correctly, Kennedy has long claimed that exercise is a crucial part of preventive health, but he melds it with an often conspiratorial hostility to government, experts and industry alike. This he has connected to a throwback (and not entirely accurate) vision of a world in which American children were much healthier.
That’s the driving message behind Trump’s reboot, but he’s missing some key context from the JFK days, as well as innovations that we’ve seen since — especially made by Obama. Gone is JFK’s emphasis on inclusive, publicly funded recreation. And, crucially, JFK supported vaccines and Medicare.
Many took to social media to express how traumatizing they found the Presidential Fitness Test. That is, how the test Trump is resurrecting undermined the council’s goals, in that it celebrated the best athletes and alienated others. Upon this week’s announcement, many took to social media to express how traumatizing they found the Presidential Fitness Test. That is, how the test Trump is resurrecting undermined the council’s goals, in that it celebrated the best athletes and alienated others, turning off many from a future of movement. For this reason, the Obamas retired the Presidential Fitness Test in favor of the Fitnessgram, which was less hierarchical and more focused on holistic lifestyle. And Trump apparently didn’t learn from one of JFK’s key mistakes: While the PCF’s campaigns encouraged citizens to lobby their local communities to spend on these programs, they were not funded with significant federal appropriations, meaning they were never more than an advisory and marketing campaign, albeit a very effective one at shifting Americans’ association with regular exercise in a positive direction. That’s right: JFK was roundly mocked by his conservative opponents for celebrating weak, inclusive fitness over manly, elite sport. JFK’s “fits of fitness,” one critic wrote, revealed his silliness, and seemed to promote mediocrity. But just as he defended Medicare against charges of promoting “socialized medicine,” JFK insisted that the nation’s “vigor” could only be recaptured by a national fitness program that included not only children, but men and women (he dropped the “Youth” from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presidential Council on Youth Fitness to make this universalism clear, and was also regularly photographed swimming, playing catch and hiking to embody the ideal himself). In any historical moment, it seems, getting Americans to exercise is an uphill battle. Like his predecessors, Trump has enlisted celebrities to promote the cause, and his picks are revealing. Announcing the initiative alongside the president was former professional wrestler Paul Levesque, aka Triple H, the latest member of the embattled WWE empire to join the presidential administration (he is Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s son-in-law). On the White House’s Instagram, Triple H emerges from the White House doors like he’s entering a ring and sprays water from his mouth like he’s ready to whip American children into shape, whether they like it or not. The swaggering, solo, white machismo is obvious — and about as far a cry as it gets from Beyoncé dancing with a cafeteria full of New York City schoolkids to promote the Obamas’ program. And of course, the WWE is primarily an entertainment franchise, not an athletic one, a fact that is both perfectly on brand for the Trump administration and further suggests this effort might be more show than substance. I too am deeply concerned about the lack of exercise among American children and adults, and am thrilled this is an administration priority. Yet I worry that Trump is bringing back the narrowest version of JFK’s vision, having learned little from fitness culture since, making it unlikely that this endeavor will improve the fitness and overall health of everyday Americans.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is Professor of History at The New School in New York City. She is the author of two books, most recently "Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession," and is currently a Carnegie Fellow, working on a new book about education and political polarization. 
