It’s been nearly a year since I last posted here. A lot has happened in the world of healthy food and raw dairy since then. Let’s see if we can do a little catch-up. DG

The sudden political clout of the foodie and antivaxx movements , symbolized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services (overseeing the FDA and CDC) seems to have come out of nowhere.

Of course, the foodie and antivaxx movements didn’t just come out of nowhere. Their popularization to the point where key leaders are preparing to take control of America’s most important governmental health levers, involved two key developments: the politicization of normally apolitical Amish farmers, who produce much of America’s raw milk; and shrewd politics by MAGA in grabbing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. away from his floundering third-party presidential run to support Donald Trump….while Kamala Harris disparaged him for his “junk science.” Throw in a huge dose of political cynicism (see the post-election photo above, showing Trump, Kennedy, and others celebrating Kennedy’s nomination with a fast-food feast, and you’ve got the upside-down situation where Donald Trump emerges from a dark presidential campaign featuring threats against the most vulnerable (especially immigrants) as the symbol for “make America healthy again.”

Back in 2015 and 2016, right around the time Trump was becoming a serious Republican candidate for president, a rumor began making the rounds among foodies: Members of the Trump family secretly purchased raw milk transported to Mar a Lago by a soft-spoken Pennsylvania Amish farmer, Amos Miller. Donald Trump was among family members and guests who supposedly enjoyed raw milk and other fresh organic foods from the Miller farm.

I checked the rumor out, and the best I could find was an article in a foodie publication that asserted Trump “is a consumer of organic food. His daughter, Ivanka, has said that the whole family consumes mostly fresh, organic meals which she often prepares herself.”

A legend was born, even if the reality was just the opposite: not only was Donald Trump not a secret raw milk drinker and organic food nut, but his food preferences were in the opposite direction, toward fast food, as one of his 2016 Twitter posts of him savoring a bucket of KFC chicken attests. Indeed, when he hosted young athletes from the Clemson champion football team as president in 2019, everyone feasted on fast food from three national chains. But like many aspects of the MAGA movement, reality didn’t matter a whole lot; the important thing was that many foodies were eager to anoint Donald Trump their leader.

The reality became so distorted that toward the end of his first administration, Trump’s Department of Justice filed a civil suit against Amos Miller, alleging that dozens of food clubs the farmer had set up around the country to distribute raw dairy and other farm-fresh products to thousands of consumer members were illegal. The DOJ action was one of several get-tough government actions against Miller that would continue under the Biden administration; at one point in 2021, Miller would be slapped with a $250,000 fine for selling meat that hadn’t been USDA inspected, and not long after that, his farm would be hit by a raid by USDA agents to completely shut down his meat sales. Miller continued to refuse USDA directives to use USDA-inspected slaughterhouses, arguing in his low-key manner that they employed acids to clean meat that were unhealthy for at least some of his food club members.

To Amos Miller and dozens of other sellers of raw dairy and farm-slaughtered meat, many of them Amish farmers, it seemed as if they had no friends in positions of power. Federal and state regulators under both Republicans and Democrats sometimes seemed to be trying to drive these farmer suppliers out of business.

Complicating the situation further, many of the customers of these farmers are parents of autistic children, for whom raw dairy of all types, including from camels, seems to lessen their children’s behavioral symptoms; the parents were increasingly outraged by the government attacks on their supply of raw milk. Some of them, together with other Amos Miller customers, helped the farmer raise more than $150,000 via Gofundme campaigns to help pay his legal bills.

Making matters worse, the Amish farmers, in efforts to maintain their identity as social outsiders living old-fashioned rural lives, avoided using tools our system makes available to establish influence, like high-powered lawyers, lobbying campaigns, and donations to political groups. As I described at various times, Miller would sometimes engage local lawyers to represent him in court, but sometimes he would come into court as his own lawyer. During the Covid pandemic, many in this foodie community joined the antivaxxers in rejecting Covid vaccines.

Enter Fox News and Tucker Carlson. One of Amos Miller’s run-ins with the USDA was sensationalized in a 2022 report by Tucker Carlson as if it was part of a Biden administration campaign against healthy food. Not long after, Los Angeles lawyer Robert Barnes, who had made a name for himself defending Alex Jones in libel cases brought by parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook in Connecticut, offered to represent Miller, who eagerly took him on. Miller apparently had had enough of the seemingly endless government assaults on his farm and network of dozens of food clubs, clustered from Los Angeles to Miami to Boston.

One effect of Miller taking on Barnes as his lawyer was to make Miller’s ongoing federal and state cases nearly regular news on Fox News. Another was that Barnes helped negotiate an arrangement to ease Miller into USDA meat inspections.

One important related development was the entrance of Robert Kennedy Jr. into the 2024 presidential campaign as a third-party candidate. Kennedy’s main claim to fame was as the best known critic of vaccines; he argued they were a cause of autism. But he was also a big proponent of raw milk, advocating for its legalization.

When Kennedy’s presidential campaign foundered, and he sought to align with Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, it was Trump who apparently went after his endorsement — and offered a high cabinet appointment in return. Kennedy then joined Trump in campaign appearances around the country, prompting Trump to advocate “make America healthy again.”

Then, just a few days before the election, an astounding scene played out on a North Carolina highway: a caravan of more than 50 Amish-driven horse-drawn carriages — each adorned with a huge American flag….plus a huge Trump-for-President banner — paraded by in a scene captured in a Tik-tok video. The Amish farmers came from Amos Miller’s home in swing state Pennsylvania to help in flood cleanup in North Carolina. What made the scene so astounding was that the Amish traditionally avoid any involvement in American politics, as part of their general reluctance to attract attention to themselves, even to the extent that they avoid being photographed.

What got them to abandon their make-no-waves tradition? Most immediately, it was likely Donald Trump’s willingness to align himself with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By the end of his own presidential campaign, Kennedy was polling at about 5% — more than enough to tilt the swing-state vote to Trump. And as they say, to the victors go the spoils, which for Kennedy and the foodie-antivaxxer movement means control of the vast Department of Health and Human Services.

What would it have taken for Kamala Harris and the Democrats to have lured Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and all the swing-state impact he likely had? It may not have been possible, but then again, given the Kennedy family’s super-deep Democratic ties, perhaps a commitment to a huge and coordinated federal research  program to at long last figure out the health riddle that autism presents might have done it. Unfortunately, we’ll never know the answer to that question.