RFK’s drug-ad ban is a bipartisan win But will Trump support him?

It’s still a surreal sight: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as America’s health secretary under President Trump. The scion of a Democratic dynasty who became an anti-vaccine gadfly and seemed, in his final years, doomed to irrelevancy — a Democratic campaign for president was going nowhere, and his independent bid wasn’t faring much better — is now one of the more powerful bureaucrats in America. There is much to be alarmed about with Kennedy, from his hatred of virtually all vaccines to his belief that bird flu should be allowed to run rampant through poultry, but many on the Left make the mistake of dismissing him outright because he’s allied himself with Trump.

The United States needs a health secretary who will, at the minimum, cast a sceptical eye on the pharmaceutical industry, which turns enormous profits and helps ensure American health care will always be commodified. Before the pandemic, most Democrats had little problem railing against Big Pharma. They were the villains, deservedly so, of the opioid epidemic, and it was not an exaggeration to say several of the pharmaceutical behemoths, most notably Purdue Pharma, had blood on their hands.

When Covid arrived, however, the politics shifted. Republicans resisted the vaccines once President Joe Biden was in office, even though Operation Warp Speed had been a Team Trump accomplishment. Democrats defended the Covid vaccines and their manufacturers — Pfizer and Moderna, in particular — at all costs, even though the jabs did cause injuries in relatively rare instances and couldn’t stop the spread of the novel coronavirus as originally promised. 

Naturally, RFK Jr. was a Covid-vaccine sceptic. Hence he became, in the 2020s, a public enemy for many liberals. 

Yet he should be listened to when it comes to one of his most cherished causes: banning pharmaceutical advertising from television. In a sane world, this would be a bipartisan cause. Few countries on Earth allow pharmaceutical companies to relentlessly market their drugs to unsuspecting consumers. Non-Americans are always shocked by what is permitted on the airwaves. Turn on the television, especially the news, for any length of time, and you will be barraged by ads for every type of malady under the Sun. Since the Nineties, drug companies have spent tens of billions on these ads.

Drug advertisements began appearing with regularity in newspapers and magazines in the Eighties, but they were mostly kept off TV by a requirement that ads naming a specific illness include the long list of side effects. In the late Nineties, the Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules, permitting advertisers to briefly summarise the drug’s risks. The TV floodgates were thrown wide open. These days, the most aggressive campaigns are for newer medications that haven’t yet gone generic; competing brands duke it out in a packed field of similar drugs to reach patients with widespread conditions like arthritis and diabetes.

The average American drug ad is easily parodied but plainly effective. Typically, some older adults are shone in a cheery setting with friends and family. The colour palette is bright. A narrator with a warm voice speaks about health challenges that might arise. The older adults are never shown to be in pain or distress; they might be taking a jog, playing with their dog, or firing up the grill. They’re bright-eyed, maybe laughing. Towards the end of the ad, the narrator will briefly summarise the drug’s side effects. Anyone with a morbid sense of humour can enjoy the contrast, just a bit: the scene remains focused on life’s joys as the narrator informs you the drug might cause rashes, bleeding, blackouts, or suicidal thoughts (in “rare cases”, rest assured).

But we know the big business of Big Pharma is no laughing matter. The drug companies are prepared to furiously fight any sort of ban that Kennedy might attempt. They will call up their expensive lobbyists on retainer in Washington to bend rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats to their will. They will probably get to Trump, who doesn’t feel passionately about the issue. 

The courts have snagged reforms in the past. Efforts to minimally restrict drug ads have repeatedly been defeated, often on First Amendment grounds. The first Trump administration tried to require that commercials mention the drug’s price, but a judge blocked the policy, saying that it lacked authority from Congress.

Will Congress act? In theory, if Trump prioritised the ban, lawmakers could push it forward. The current Republican Party will obey Trump’s commands. The narrow majority the GOP holds in the House could be bolstered by a slew of progressive and populist Democrats who might view a fight with Big Pharma as a winning issue. Several centrist Democrats in swing districts, including Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington state, campaigned on a platform that was critical of pharmaceutical companies. 

There’s a coalition to be built if the Trump administration takes the issue seriously. If a critical mass of Senate Republicans back legislation, it’s not hard to imagine the most Left-wing members of the Democratic conference, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, supporting a ban on TV ads. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut who may run for president and has swerved in a more populist direction, could be a convert, too.

But that’s the rub: Trump has never demonstrated that he is all that interested in the granular work of getting policy priorities through Congress. In the first term, he was content to let Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan hash out a corporate tax cut and attempt — unsuccessfully — to repeal ObamaCare. 

For now, Congress is focused on classic GOP priorities like tax cuts for the wealthy and gutting Medicaid, the health-care programme that covers more than 70 million Americans. In addition to being cruel to the poor, a budget reconciliation package with tax and health-care cuts is likely to prove inflationary, especially when paired with tariffs. Beyond the tariffs, there’s no grander project here. The populism Trump promised isn’t being delivered — DOGE, and its wanton budget cuts, certainly aren’t it. 

What conservatives don’t quite understand is that the truest owning of the libs will come through triangulation. Trump can begin to subdue Democrats by pursuing policies like a ban on TV pharmaceutical ads, forcing the Left to stand with him for something popular or oppose him and appear extremely out of touch. Trump doesn’t seem to have that kind of savvy. He’s fine to let his party scheme over Medicaid cuts. 

That will not end well for the GOP. Democrats know how to campaign on health care, and taking it away from working-class people will make the 2026 midterms rather easy for the party out of power. Those political ads write themselves. They’ll be sandwiched between the 30-second spots for heart-disease pills that may cause internal bleeding and murderous thoughts. In rare cases.

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Ross Barkan is a columnist for New York and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

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