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October 21, 2024 - 9:15pm
From behind the counter at McDonald’s, Donald Trump put into stark contrast the tension between MAGA populism and MAHA populism. MAHA, short for Make America Healthy Again, is a slogan adopted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr as he campaigns on behalf of the Republican candidate.
There’s no question Trump’s trip to McDonald’s served his campaign well, despite the ravings of Keith Olbermann. Viral posts highlighting the resemblance between Trump’s campaign stop and an old Andy Warhol quote help explain why. “The President has so much good publicity potential that hasn’t been exploited,” Warhol wrote decades ago. “He should just sit down one day and make a list of all the things that people are embarrassed to do that they shouldn’t be embarrassed to do, and then do them all on television.”
This is the economic populism of MAGA at its most effective. Populists on the Left, though, are familiar critics of the Golden Arches. The chain underpays workers and pushes toxins on the working class, they say, disproportionately harming black Americans and preying on the poor.
RFK Jr himself deployed this criticism back in 2020 when he posted a quotation from an article published in Truthout. “Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and the larger food and beverage industry have already seen to the enactment of at least a dozen laws preempting local public health policies like soda taxes, product labeling and restrictions on junk food marketing to kids,” Kennedy quoted from the article. “This has allowed the industry to continue its racist marketing campaigns, target marketing to Black youth and other youth of color. Understanding these tactics is key to undoing and preventing further proliferation of the industry’s preemption push.”
Republicans, especially those with deep ties to corporate America, long rebuked these criticisms as undermining the agency of poor Americans, who can make their own decisions about what to eat, where to work, and how to spend their budget. Does it make any sense for the populist Right to celebrate Trump’s embrace of a company that long fought the minimum wage and violates just about every principle held dear by the high-profile MAHA wing of the movement? MAHA campaigns directly against “Big Food” and it’s hard to get bigger than McDonald’s.
The Wall Street Journal probed this ostensible conflict earlier this month. “It’s not a marketing thing. Trump has bought into it,” Joe Grogan, who worked in Trump’s White House (and not to be confused with podcaster Joe Rogan), told the paper. Kennedy adviser Calley Means agreed, saying: “It’s not about lecturing Americans to eat healthy. It’s about not having completely co-opted institutions provide standards on health and food.”
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SubscribeI think this headline is an overreaction. This was just an election stunt.
Exactly. And “MAHA” is a niche issue for the part of the electorate likely to vote Republican.
If the image at the top of this article presents any problem for Trump, it’s that McDonald’s, and the other fast food chains, have now priced themselves out of the bottom end of the consumer market. They are obviously engaged in price gouging so that a burger, fries and Coke can now cost $14.00 or more. Ordinary people can barely afford to eat there anymore.
On the other hand, RFK Jr. is probably rubbing his hands with glee: fast food is now too expensive for most people to gorge themselves on it.
There is no such thing as price gouging. If you don’t want to pay the price, don’t buy the product. You are paying for the product, the ‘experience,’ the convenience, and whatever pleasure you get from the purchase. A business has the right – and fiscal duty – to charge ‘whatever the traffic will bear’ for their products.
The only exception is a true monopoly, i.e. a government enforced or encouraged monopoly. McDonalds ain’t that.
Moreover, Mickey D’s and other fast food chains are doing what most all businesses do in response to inflation (courtesy of Biden-Harris): raising prices.
You’re right about people voting with their feet. But don’t try to tell us there’s no price gouging. There are some things that are a necessity, nothing to do with the “experience”. Monopolies exist without government support. Sometimes there might be two of them. This may vary from country to country though, I suspect, not much,
His whole life is a stunt, so will be his presidency, if he didn’t inherit all that money from his father which he almost lost with his casinos, no one would know or care who this man is.
He certainly knows how to pull stunts. So you think it’s only because he inherited money that he’s known? So why is he known for that only? Why and how would people know that, unless he’d done other things. And almost losing means he didn’t lose. And obviously he’s done a lot of things. You think all those people turning up to his rallies js just because he inherited money? Or that he actually won an election and in the second received 74 million votes just because he inherited money? Just because you don’t like what he’s done doesn’t mean he’s done nothing but inherit money. It’s a cheap way to denigrate someone.
He has done stunts; they are called entertainment that carry a message. But he also accomplished quite a bit both as a private citizen and moreso as President – peace treaties, tax adjustments, border control, etc.
Dave,
Get over the need to make sure every knows how ignorant TDS has made you.
Some people are having to work harder and harder to find something to criticise in Trump, although strangely Harris gets an easy ride. I wonder why?
Actually, I’m still not sure what Harris stands for, or what she might do in office. Nor do I have any idea what she did in the past (if anything).
What she did in the past: she probably didn’t work at McDonalds as she claims (she’s certainly failing to back up her claim, which has also changed in detail at least once). This is why Trump’s stunt works – as well as showing he has the common touch and Harris doesn’t. She’s looking increasingly inauthentic and out of touch.
However much you find to dislike about Trump (where do you start ? or stop ?), he certainly knows how to pull a stunt and get people talking.
That and Nimrod Tim fumbling around with a shotgun he supposedly is uber familiar with on that staged hunting trip.
Trump is a lot of things, but he is instinctively a good retail politician, in vast contrast to Hillary, Biden, and Kamala. Not much joy in those three!
Therein lies the choice: Trump pompously brags about the many things that he has accomplished, whereas Kamala creates unintelligible and lengthy word salads in her desperate bid to hide that she doesn’t have any accomplishments to brag about.
The few things she has said so far should make everyone gasp in alarm.
Well if you were a wealthy client of Kamala’s firm you would sure as heck know what she could do…
It was just a fun gimmick, Emily.
I won’t dignify this essay by even reading it. The problem isn’t McDonald’s. The problem is that good, healthy food is more expensive than McDonald’s. Poor people often have little choice but to eat crap, either by price or access. My apologies if this is what the author argued.
Vegetables are cheap and heathy, pulses are almost given away. The problem is the time and effort involved in preparing them.
Even that is overstated, but nobody ever taught the current generation of urban parents how to cook.
Oh, please. You can purchase the ingredients for multiple meals to feed multiple people for the price of one “value meal” at any fast food joint. The issue isn’t lack of money. The issue is unwillingness to eat healthy and to take responsibility for one’s health. A small order of fries at McDonald’s costs $2.28. A 12-ounce bag of frozen broccoli costs $1.16 at Walmart. Stop aping this nonsensical worldview and use some critical thinking.
This is just silly. People go to McDonald’s for a treat; for a coffee, for a family night out. It’s a big deal for lower-income families and a warm environment for disadvantaged communities. Nobody eats fast food every well (well, almost nobody does), and as an occasional thing, it can definitely fit into a healthy diet.
Not just poor people but virtually all kids. The latter love McD’s and consider it a great treat to go there.
Three-quarters of people in the United States are either overweight or obese…not sure there are many “healthy diets” to speak of here. And if you have money to spend on McDonald’s, you are not that poor or disadvantaged. Perhaps if people stayed away from McDonald’s and made better choices, we would not have so many people whining about how they cannot get coverage for Ozempic?
I think Emily, you are taking yourself far too seriously. Lighten up. It was a brilliant stunt and showed Trump to be a man of the people and not a manufactured phony as Kamala surely is.
Exactly. I like most of Emily’s pieces but this is trying to make something out of nothing.
What it did accomplish in part is to give the Left another reason for Trump to live rent-free in their heads, and tweak their TDS a bit more. Brilliant stunt!
I dont think it will undermine it. But thanks for explaining !
RFK Jr has been posting about beef tallow fries being better than seed oil fries. Some how I think there wont be a problem.
Oh no! How could the crude and crass Trump do that to RFK Jr.?
Brother and sister Calley and Casey Means are doing well with their new book Good Energy, but the advice they give in that book is like Chris van Tulleken gives in his Over-Processed People. Some of the things they say make sense, but they are common sense and already-known things. The rest of it is just conjecture.
Bobby Kennedy is all talk and has shown no ability to get things done. I’m not a fan. But he does have some good ideas, particularly about taming the federal health bureaucrats like Tony Fauci, and I think Donald Trump will pick those out to actually get things done. McDonalds will survive just fine.
Trump’s visit to McDonald’s was a savvy move. RFK, Jr. will get over it
Make McDonalds Healthy Again!
“Again”???
Say what you will about McDonalds, but at least they have toilets, which has helped me on several high street shopping trips. They also close late so provide warmth and seating for homeless people well into the night. I’ll never forget seeing a young Chinese McDonalds worker gently trying to wake an old lady asleep at a table one night at 1030. It’s also a great place to take kids of vegan parents for a secret treat which has earned me the accolade of favourite aunt of all time in my family.
RFK Jr is a crackpot and a crank. Why would anyone care about his “message”, whatever the topic?
Have you ever listened to him? Actually listened?
The mentality of the lynch mob. No evidence needed, you just “know” the bad guy. Cos someone said he is a crackpot more than ten times and that’s all you need.
RFK seems to disagree with the author:
“Fast Food is a part of American culture. But that doesn’t mean it has to be unhealthy, and that we can’t make better choices. Did you know that McDonald’s used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990? This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic. Interestingly enough, this began to drastically rise around the same time fast food restaurants switched from beef tallow to seed oils in their fryers.
People who enjoy a burger with fries on a night out aren’t to blame, and Americans should have every right to eat out at a restaurant without being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils. It’s time to Make Frying Oil Tallow Again”
Quoted from RFK’s X account.
I could go for some McNuggets and fries, maybe a diet coke.
The difficulty with proposing government action to mitigate the health and obesity crisis is that governments created it in the first place.
Health, America and message should never appear in the same sentence. Hugh Jarze is the normal in the USA and has been in every Empire with too much to eat, Ozempic notwithstanding.
Emily, you can’t believe this farfetched analysis. Trump’s visit displayed his human side and as a fast food junkie he was enjoying himself to the
Honoring and respecting the workers is far different than addressing health concerns of the food they prepare. RFK gets it.
So Trump playfully engaging the American public at one of their favourite haunts is undermining RFKs health message is it? What a laugh. You can enjoy the occasional McDonalds and be a perfect specimen of human health. It’s fast food, fun food. He’s not endorsing it as the daily diet!!
This is a pretty weak article full of attitudinising and little hard fact -.though to be fair this may be mainly RFK’s fault.
“Campaigned against the minimum wage”?. Many businesses did, and not only for ignoble reasons – set it too high and it destroys jobs. But does McDonalds today break the law and not pay its workers what they are entitled to? I doubt it. Many Americans simply eat much too much, and it is hardly impossible to eat a much healthier diet – and just LESS – than many do. A single McDonalds meal is no more unhealthy in itself than all sorts of posh food and restaurants endlessly lauded by the coastal elites!