Politics

Trump Says Scandal-Scarred RFK Jr. Loves ‘Health Food and Women Things’

WHAT TIMING

The former president made the comment while answering a question about how he’d help get more organic foods into urban and low-income areas.

Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shake hands on stage.
Go Nakamura/REUTERS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may not be so fond of Donald Trump’s latest praise of him.

That’s because Trump, while answering a question about how he’d get more organic foods into urban and low-income areas, bizarrely said in a town hall-style event that Kennedy is big into “women things.”

The timing of that comment isn’t great. The married Kennedy, 70, has been embroiled in a sex scandal with New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31, for the last month and has a history of being a serial philanderer.

ADVERTISEMENT

New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi.
New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi.

The comment may have been merely a Freudian slip by Trump, who himself has been the subject affair allegations over the decades. Or Trump may have meant to say that Kennedy is a supporter of women’s rights like abortion, which Kennedy backed in his since-ended presidential campaign.

Either way, the comment doesn’t make much sense in the context of the question that was being asked of Trump.

“What is the plan to do about the food healthcare industry and getting artificial foods banned in urban communities that have less access to organic whole foods?” a Bronx man asked Trump.

Trump responded, “So, Bobby Kennedy, right? Everybody likes Bobby, and he’s so big into the health (sic) food and women things, everything. He wants to do things in the environment and he endorsed me. First time a Kennedy has ever endorsed a Republican. Maybe it’s going to be the last, but I doubt it.”

Trump, a self-proclaimed lover of fast food and Diet Coke, eventually got around to answering the question. He suggested Kennedy would be given a role inside his administration that’d lead to an increase in food regulations and, perhaps, an initiative to increase healthy foods into urban areas.

“He would be so perfect,” Trump said of Kennedy. “He doesn’t like artificial foods and he doesn’t like pesticides and all the stuff they put on him. And if you listen to him for 10 minutes, I mean, he says other countries that don’t do anything [to their foods] are healthier than us. Okay, we’re not that healthy, to put it mildly. So no artificial foods. We don’t want. We have plenty of food—the food isn’t our problem.”

That wasn’t all from Trump, who went on to praise U.S. farmers and declare that they aren’t “doing well at all” like they were under his presidency. The ex-president offered no proof of that, but said he’d dispatch Kennedy to right the ship.

“We’re not going to have artificial foods,” Trump said. “We don’t want artificial foods. We want healthy foods. And a lot of things are going to be going. I’ll tell you, I’m going to have Bobby Kennedy involved in it. He’s great guy...He’s a person that talks more about food and health than anything else, and I think that’s cool so we’ll get it taken care of.

“You’ll be healthier four years from now than you are now.”