The transition of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Democrat to independent to (gasp!) Republican was a popcorn-grabbing sideshow of the 2024 election season — until it became the main event.  The defection of Bobby Kennedy to Team Trump was a seismic shift in an already bizarre presidential election, but it also formed a more perfect union — between MAGA and MAHA (Make America Healthy Again).  And if President-Elect Donald Trump fails to deliver on his MAHA commitments, MAGA will collapse in the broken bargain.

MAHA was not merely a clever pivot of campaign messaging; it was a melding of policy platforms necessary to reclaim Americans’ creed of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  MAGA is not about returning the nation to the 1950s; it is about restoring the Rule of Law, fiscal integrity, regulated borders, citizen security, and trust in the government.  It is about reclaiming free speech and worship; equality of all, regardless of race or identity alphabet; and accountability for government agencies that lied about the Steele Dossier, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 “interventions.”  MAGA is about re-establishing basic constitutional liberties for all Americans.  No MAGA, no MAHA.

What good is liberty without health?  The merging of the Kennedy platform with Trump’s offered Americans a dual vision — not just for economic growth and safer streets, but safer meals and a shift toward reducing illness, especially for children.  Kennedy is correct about the health crisis unfolding in America.  Who could possibly oppose MAHA?

Democrats, for one.  If Donald Trump advised taking daily vitamins, Democrats would likely dump their Geritol and Flintstones chewables into their toilets.  However, another group is even more opposed to the MAHA plan: industrial agriculture and food processing interests.

Politico reported on the battle over Trump’s choice for USDA that “some in the agriculture industry and on Capitol Hill ... [are] relieved the president-elect did not tap someone more openly aligned with Kennedy and his critiques of the current agriculture system.”  The battle for USDA chief represents the battle for the soul of the nation’s future:

[Kennedy has] openly promised to go to war with large agriculture interests he argues are at the root of Americans’ twin obesity and chronic health crises.

But those fights lie within USDA, which oversees a $430 billion–plus yearly budget and 100,000 employees, touching nearly every part of the country’s $1.5 trillion food and agriculture industry. Not HHS.

Farm state lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also been skeptical that Trump would actually allow Kennedy to follow through on his promises to upend the food system and go to war against big corporate agriculture interests, including those that are protected by rural Republicans. Several candidates for Cabinet posts even tried to lean on the strong ties to the corporate agriculture sector within Trump’s inner circle.

A war on conventional agriculture is not in the cards even for Kennedy — the nation cannot transition away from its industrial food dependency as easily as Bobby did from toxic Democrats.  However, if the industrial stranglehold on Americans’ food production and processing is not broken, the nation’s children, along with its water, soils, and food supplies, will continue to decline.  There are trillions of dollars of federal subsidies involved in food production.  The industrial “stakeholders” (not consumer “steakholders” or local farmers) are ultimately the beneficiaries of all those tax dollars.  They will not allow Bobby to take away their cash cow without a fight.

If Donald Trump does not deliver on promises to improve Americans’ health and food supplies, he will do more than merely break a political pledge — he will fall on the battlefield with banner in hand before even being sworn in.  There is no life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness without healthy, local food supplies.  Control the food, control the people — and their guns, worship times, political views, and ability to live.  It is a tactic older than siege warfare.

Stalin and Mao were mere dabblers compared to what the globalist cabal of the U.N., WHO, and WEF have in store for the global human population.  Syngenta, Bayer, and BlackRock all sit as “partners” at the WEF table, crafting totalitarian plans to subjugate all food production under an industrial system that creates absolute dependency.  Humans must eat plants and eliminate cows — but is that to save the world or to solidify corporate profits and globalist domination?  These same companies, and many others, sit also in the corridors of the federal government, determined to retain their regulatory capture not just of the EPA and FDA, but of the pivotal USDA.

Democrats claim they oppose corporate profiteers, but they have flung open the nation’s bureaucratic doors to corporate control — how about those PFAS being generated by renewables manufacturing?  Forever chemicals for the little children, anyone?  There is no persuasiveness for conservatives targeting renewables polluters if Big Ag is left in charge of food supplies.

Control the food, control the people. Make the food healthier and more secure, and win We the People over for 2026 and 2028.  Abandon food production to globalist profiteers, and all is lost.  No MAHA, no MAGA.

MAHA and MAGA go together.  Free speech for cancer patients and obese children is not a life of liberty and pursuing happiness, but an irreversible dystopian doom.  Kennedy has committed his entire being to thwart industrial domination of food.  If Donald Trump does not heed Bobby’s warnings, the promises of MAGA will ring hollow as Americans’ health and life expectancies continue to plummet.  Conservatives will lose all credibility with the electorate they promised to rescue from food enslavement, and they will sicken themselves and their children in the political process.

Attorney-farmer John Klar hosts the Small Farm Republic Substack and podcast from his Vermont farm.  His recent book is Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival.

Image: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.