Nooo don’t go to the doctor you’re so sexy aha. (Composite / Photos: Shutterstock)
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. is ripped. I know this, and quite possibly you do too, thanks to workout videos he’s posted to social media.
The most recent clip went viral last week, when he visited a Pentagon gym and staged a fitness contest with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It was a race to see who could do a hundred pushups and fifty pullups more quickly. Kennedy lost, though only narrowly and with cleaner form, which is not at all bad given that he’s also more than a quarter century older than the former infantry officer and Fox News host.
Kennedy has been sharing videos like these for a while, at least since June 2023 during his failed presidential campaign. He’s usually shirtless or wearing a form-fitting t-shirt, and you’re entitled to wonder whether he just enjoys showing off his testosterone-aided, preternaturally bronzed physique. (You’re also entitled to wonder why he wears jeans.) But the videos have another purpose—promoting exercise—that’s entirely consistent with Kennedy’s duties as secretary of health and human services.
Exercise has vast benefits for the health of body and mind, and can be important in staving off obesity and the chronic diseases to which it contributes. And while Kennedy sometimes acts like he discovered this connection—never mind that Hippocrates was preaching the virtues of exercise back in the fourth century B.C.—at least the encouragement of physical activity ranks among the more constructive of Kennedy’s messages.
Think about it: If Kennedy can get more people to the gym, or even just walking around the block, it could pay off as better health and lower health care bills. This was in many ways the best-case scenario for Kennedy at HHS—that he’d use the position to promote better eating and more exercise rather than to carry out his crusade against vaccination.
But of course that is not what’s happened.
Since taking office, Kennedy has gone after vaccines with exactly the determination that his critics feared he would. He’s purged scientists from advisory boards. He’s altered immunization recommendations, in ways that will make it harder for many Americans to get COVID shots. And he’s yanked the funds underwriting research into next-generation mRNA vaccines that could be our best defense against future pandemics, not to mention a bioterror attack.
It’s easy, maybe even tempting, to think these two sides of Kennedy are largely separate, that his hostility to vaccines has nothing to do with his enthusiasm for fitness. But the two have a crucial connection. And once you see it, you can more fully understand just how dangerous his tenure at HHS could be.