McDonald’s feast undercuts Trump health pledge
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Donald Trump has never made a secret of his love of fast food and Diet Coke.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, Mr Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has been pictured sharing a McDonald’s meal with his future boss, days after they promised to “make America healthy again”.
Mr Kennedy flew with Trump aboard his plane to an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in New York on Nov 16 along with Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and Mr Donald Jr, the Republican’s eldest son.
The four men are shown seated in front of trays of McDonald’s food in a photo posted online by Mr Donald Jr on Nov 17 which he jokingly captioned: “Make America healthy again starts tomorrow.”
Trump and Mr Kennedy, a scion of the famous Democratic political family, campaigned together ahead of the presidential election on Nov 5 promising to tackle processed food, among other priorities.
Announcing Mr Kennedy’s nomination on Nov 14, Trump said that “for too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies”.
Social media commentators noted that Mr Kennedy appeared the least enthusiastic of the diners as he gingerly held an opened burger box, with fries and a bottle of Coca-Cola in front of him.
The 70-year-old, a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine campaigner, has long argued that the US needs to curb its obesity epidemic by reducing the high levels of sugar, fat and high-additive processed food in the national diet.
In a podcast posted last week, he was scathing about Trump’s diet, saying “the stuff that he eats is really bad”.
“Campaign food is always bad but the food that goes onto (Trump’s) airplane is just poison,” he told the Joe Polish podcast. “You don’t have a choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs.”
Trump has never made a secret of his love of fast food and Diet Coke, even briefly stopping to work at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania during his campaign in October.
“I love salt!” he told workers there.
Mr Kennedy will need confirmation by the Senate to take up his job as health secretary, with some senior Republicans voicing concerns about his suitability for the position. AFP
