This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 19 episode of “The Beat with Ari Melber.“
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a known critic of processed foods. In the past, he’s even likened a fast-food diet to poison. But now, as he continues jockeying for the job of health and human services secretary in the next administration, President-elect Donald Trump is making him publicly eat his words.
In a now-viral photo posted by Donald Trump Jr. to X, Kennedy can be seen holding a McDonald’s burger with the president-elect and some of his favored allies aboard a private plane.
Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LLzr5S9ugf
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 17, 2024
Kennedy looks sad, and according to Trump veterans, like former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, that embarrassment is the point.
The photo may have been Trump’s way of responding to Kennedy’s recent public rebuke of his diet. “Campaign food is always bad,” Kennedy said last week on “The Joe Polish Show” podcast. “But the food that goes onto that airplane is like just poison. You have a choice between — you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs.”
Kennedy didn’t look like he had much of a choice in the photo, but House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that Kennedy ate “some of the McDonalds.”
“I am not sure if I should say that, but I think he did,” Johnson told reporters.
Trump has deliberately humiliated his vanquished rivals before. In 2016, weeks after he won the election, a photo of him having dinner with Mitt Romney went viral. Trump made a show of suggesting Romney badly wanted a job in his administration. There was also Kevin McCarthy’s photo op at Mar-a-Lago, just weeks after the Republican leader blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Trump has deliberately humiliated his vanquished rivals before. When Kennedy joined “The Beat” earlier this year, I asked him why he was often warm to Trump, as opposed to President Joe Biden, during his so-called independent bid for president. “I would definitely disagree with that,” Kennedy told me in May. “He just called me a radical effing liberal.” Well, Kennedy did warm up to Trump. In August, he suspended his presidential campaign and quickly offered his endorsement. After running against him, it seems eating “poison” was simply the price Kennedy had to pay to be picked for Trump’s Cabinet. Allison Detzel contributed.
Ari Melber
Ari Melber, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, writer and attorney, is the host of “The Beat with Ari Melber” airing nightly at 6 p.m. ET on MSNBC. He also serves as MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent and an NBC News legal analyst. Before joining MSNBC, Melber practiced First Amendment law and served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate. He received a J.D. from Cornell Law School and is a member of the New York Bar.
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