The 5 Most Brutal Hits in John Oliver’s MAHA Takedown
Comedian John Oliver devoted a Sunday night takedown on Last Week Tonight to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign, a wellness crusade that the host warned fused fringe health fads and replaced key public health institutions with “liver smoothies.”
Oliver caveated his takedown with the acknowledgment that people have found themselves aligned with the core principles of MAHA “for all sorts of reasons” and “there are areas where this movement has legitimate concerns” while “pointing out real problems.”
In a 30-minute demolition job, Oliver ripped Kennedy and his allies, accusing them of peddling pseudoscience and celebrating hollow policy victories.
Here are the five most brutal moments as Oliver attempted to pull apart MAHA’s credibility:
1. Don’t Buy The Hat
Oliver ripped most of what constitutes MAHA as more of a money-making branding exercise than a serious policy push, rounding on Kennedy’s early campaign video urging Americans to buy a MAGA-style branded hat:
Yeah. Although, you also don’t actually need to do that at all. You really don’t have to do anything that guy does, up to and including swim in a sewage-tainted creek, hike in jeans in 100-degree weather, and single-handedly make Google searches for bear carcass skyrocket.
2. Raw Meat Smoothies in the White House
In May, Kennedy invited online influencers to the White House as he unveiled the MAHA report, but Oliver highlighted one podcaster in attendance who bragged about drinking raw milk and meat smoothies on site, and even persuaded RFK to take a raw milk shot. Oliver’s incredulity was savage:
That is what the White House is up to these days, hosting podcast symposiums for influencers to eat like regionally powerful cavemen. That guy even got RFK to do a raw milk shot on camera, making raw milk one of the most disgusting things floating around in RFK at any given time, right up there with that dead worm in his brain.
3. Riboflavin or ‘Riboflain’
In other MAHA promotional material played back by Oliver, Kennedy rattled off chemical ingredients used in foods, with Education Secretary Linda McMahon struggling to pronounce many of the preservatives listed – including “riboflain.” Oliver didn’t miss the opportunity to scoff:
Okay, so, first, riboflavin is just vitamin B2, but sure. Second, I’d love for the Secretary of Education to be able to read. It’s just a personal preference. And, finally, as long as we’re blacklisting foods based on bad names, I’ve got some suggestions starting with cumquat, a word that starts with cum and gets worse from there.
4. Liver Smoothies?!
Crystalizing his point that MAHA elevates untested wellness fads, the host rolled back a clip of Casey Means, Kennedy’s nominee for surgeon general, touting raw liver smoothies as health drinks on the Grounded Wellness podcast. The comedian then delivered his deadpan verdict:
Look, I think we, as a society, have collectively lost our grasp on what smoothies are supposed to be. Because there should not be meat in there, as that is definitionally no longer a smoothie. It is hospital food for a terminally ill hyena.
5. ‘Full QVC’ in Congress
Oliver mocked Kennedy for announcing an HHS campaign to encourage citizens to use wearable devices as a solution to monitor serious conditions like diabetes. The pitch, made during a congressional hearing in July was at odds with Kennedy’s past concerns about surveillance:
RFK, despite spending years warning its followers that wearable devices like glucose monitors were part of a sinister plan to surveil and control Americans…
He’s basically doing a product shill to Congress there. And at that point, he might as well just go full QVC and offer to pair each glucose meter with a free aroma diffuser, if you call, in the next ten minutes.
Oliver’s overriding argument was that Kennedy’s wellness politics have become a sideshow while his administration dismantles real public health safeguards, pointing out moves to end the government’s mRNA vaccine research.
The host added: “At best, [MAHA] is about laundering the reputation of an administration that is doing the exact opposite.”
Watch above via HBO.
