The memes comparing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Richard Rachel Levine are hilarious. Levine, of course, is the assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services, and he claims to be and dresses up like a woman. For this fiction, he receives awards and plaudits from fawning leftists, and Big Tech censors speech on his behalf. Yet the contrast between an overweight, mentally ill 67-year-old man and an incredibly fit 70-year-old health nut might provide all you need to know about the competing views of health and wellness in our nation.

That said, though there are reasons for optimism, color me skeptical that RFK is the right pick to lead HHS.

Donald Trump nominated RFK for the post yesterday in a pitch to “Make America Healthy Again.” In reality, the nomination is Trump’s thanks for RFK dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing him/stumping for him across the country. Never forget that Democrats fought to keep RFK off the ballot when it looked like he would cost Joe Biden votes, and then they fought to keep him on the ballot after he dropped out because it became clear that he’d pull tens of thousands of votes from Trump in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

Democracy, my rear end.

RFK is primarily known as an anti-vaxxer. He did, after all, found a prominent anti-vaccine advocacy group, and he has said some outrageous things about thoroughly tested vaccines over the years. Things such as asserting that there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective” because vaccines have caused an “autism epidemic.” It’s also true that surging anti-vaccine sentiment — thanks to the Left’s gross tyranny during COVID with vaccine mandates — is causing things like a surge of measles worldwide. RFK is adamantly opposed to vax mandates, as are we. That doesn’t make all of them a bad idea, which is effectively what RFK espouses.

I’m also not here to argue that case (read David Harsanyi for starters if you want more), and it’s not my primary objection to RFK, who’s far more than that one issue. Nor, for that matter, is my objection rooted in a list of RFK’s other views about health that range from intriguing to bat-guano crazy.

HHS is a $2 trillion behemoth that oversees more of the federal budget than any other single agency. Medicare, Medicaid, ObamaCare, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and more are all under the purview of the HHS secretary.

That fact tees up my primary objection: Kennedy is not a conservative convert; he’s still a big government, ecofascist left-winger who just happened to fall out of favor with his tribe because of his opposition to COVID tyranny and other unorthodox health views. For example, he said, “My highest ambition would be to have a single-payer program” for health insurance. He realizes that’s not (yet) politically viable, but we’ve always argued that was the end goal of Democrats via ObamaCare.

He’s rarely seen an abortion regulation he liked. He has used the misleading pro-abortion framing that the choice belongs entirely to the woman and not the government, “even if it’s full-term.” He did later walk that back a bit, claiming, “Once the baby is viable outside the womb, it should have rights, and it deserves society’s protection.”

In short, just because Democrats are screaming about his nomination, and just because Leftmedia outlets run to every discredited health and science agency or hack they can find to denounce the pick, doesn’t make it the right one.

On the other hand, Trump pointed to his priorities: fixing our food supply and addressing chronic diseases.

“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration,” he wrote on X yesterday, “and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”

When I pick up my daughter from high school and see how many of her classmates are obese, it’s hard not to think that RFK is right — there’s something wrong with our food supply. Very few of my classmates were even mildly overweight when I was in high school 30 years ago. Something has changed.

RFK says 40% of adults aged 22 to 44 are obese, and he argues that’s because American food is overly processed and full of bad stuff. “We have a thousand ingredients in our foods that are illegal in Italy and other countries in Europe,” he said last month. I don’t know if he’s right or wrong about all of his claims, but I don’t deny there’s a big problem.

“Stop allowing beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to use their food stamps to buy soda or processed foods,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in September. “It’s nonsensical for U.S. taxpayers to spend tens of billions of dollars subsidizing junk that harms the health of low-income Americans.”

I concur, doctor. In fact, I’d go further. I question the constitutionality of food stamps in the first place, though that’s another debate.

Maybe RFK is on to something regarding chronic diseases, too. To overgeneralize things, we were getting healthier and living longer (thanks, ironically, to vaccines) until we weren’t. American life expectancy has fallen in recent years, and we’re less healthy than we used to be. The average American adult is 30 pounds heavier than a few decades ago.

Is Kennedy correct that Americans have been “mass poisoned by big pharma and big food,” all while the federal government has either done nothing to stop it or aided in the crime? It’s understandable why he and others come to that conclusion. Clearly, HHS, the CDC and FDA, and the entire health and science establishment have lost the trust of millions of Americans. Deservedly so because they’re getting so many things so devastatingly wrong.

NBC News begins a story on RFK with this unintentionally hilarious line: “Some staff members at the Food and Drug Administration are considering a quick exit.” To quote the supremely unconcerned Willy Wonka, “Stop. Don’t. Come back.”

The usual hysterics are amusing, but does that make RFK the right pick? Does it mean RFK’s personal views should become government mandates? RFK is pretty far out there on some key issues, but he’s also like Trump — he’s a bomb to the DC establishment. The pro and the con is that bombs aren’t precision instruments.

In any case, it really doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what 100 senators think. RFK has burned bridges with Democrats, and if they vote in lockstep opposition as they usually do to GOP nominees, he can afford to lose only three Republicans.

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

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Update: My apologies for missing this hugely important aspect of this story, but on the same day Trump nominated RFK, here’s the stranger-than-fiction baloney HHS posted on X:

Trans rights are human rights. HHS is proud to commit to increasing health equity and providing access to care for transgender and nonbinary Americans. 🏳️‍⚧️ #TransgenderAwarenessWeek pic.twitter.com/LLVv810sod

— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) November 14, 2024