RFK’s Confirmation Hearing and MAHA Moms: What Is Happening Here?

Of course, not everyone who had these concerns went down the Q rabbit hole. But for some of these women it was a slippery slope from making your own cough drops to believing, as one prominent influencer wrote at the time, that the naval hospital ships docked in Manhattan to treat COVID-19 patients were actually housing kidnapped children who were being smuggled through tunnels under Central Park and forced into slavery.

I spent the next few years covering this movement, from prominent moms turned “truth tellers” like Little Miss Patriot to the Wayfair conspiracy and “save our children.” Even as the conspiracists grew more and more fanciful, wellness was always a pivotal part of their message. Little Miss Patriot, for instance, sold a mouth spray that promised to cure those who had been vaccinated as children by removing “toxins like mercury and lead from your body at a cellular level to reveal your body’s full potential.”

Then Joe Biden was elected president, the January 6 insurrection happened, and social media platforms’ efforts to permanently ban QAnon acolytes were largely successful. The movement splintered and faded from public consciousness.

Kennedy, though, is the perfect new champion for the simmering, wellness-obsessed, anti-vaccine-curious crowd, and he’s reactivated many who were dormant. He isn’t pushing QAnon-level, Pizzagate-level nonsense, and some of his positions are ones many of these women either already believed (no vaccines) or are primed to believe (drink raw milk). He rails against things like food dyes and seed oils, longtime bogeymen of self-described “crunchy moms,” who cheered him on as the savior they had long been waiting for.

“I just want what’s best for [my kids] so they can feel their best,” one of these mothers, now a fervent advocate for Kennedy, told USA Today. “The fact that he actually seems to care and want to make these changes is great.… You look at the ingredients of Lucky Charms here and Lucky Charms in Europe, and the ingredients they use here are different and more horrible, and have all the dyes.”

Once a few “MAHA moms” started spreading the word, support exploded. TikTok and Instagram are full of women practically prostrating themselves at Kennedy’s feet, saying they are shedding tears at RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing watching him fight for the nation’s children.

“This made me cry,” said one proud MAHA mom. “Thank you RFK for putting our kids safety and the many generations after to be healthier.”

The most frustrating part of all of this? Many of the MAHA mom talking points are valid. The science isn’t definitive on the harms of food dyes, but the FDA just banned Red Dye No. 3 over concerns it could be a carcinogen. The American diet could use a shake-up and children should be encouraged to eat healthier, more unprocessed foods as a general rule.

This is a position several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have held, including, most notably, Michelle Obama when she was first lady. Remember “Let’s Move” and the Task Force on Childhood Obesity and the new regulations regarding school lunches (which by the way, really helped kids)? Trump rolled back those regulations in 2020, which was met with cheers from Republicans, who had criticized the program as being part of the “liberal nanny state.”