Dignity is now unaffordable: Idaho Gov. Little shares stage with RFK | Opinion
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- Gov. Brad Little appeared with RFK Jr., known for anti-vaccine activism.
- MAHA goals include opposition to water fluoridation, vaccines and modern agriculture.
- Kennedy’s health claims target Idaho farmers, risking public trust and safety.
Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday played host to a kook, a quack, a conspiracy theorist, a man he never would have deigned to share the stage with just a few years ago — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
How bizarre for the grandson of Idaho’s “sheep king” to be angling for camera time with a man who repeatedly said that American hog farmers were worse than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida — in April 2002, just months after the Twin Towers fell.
Maybe they have time to share stories about common interests.
- Little, for example, likes to hunt.
- And Kennedy once found a dead bear cub on the side of the road, figured he’d save it to eat along with all the other roadkill in his freezer, got bored and dumped it in Central Park.
- Little likes his oatmeal with Chobani yogurt, Idaho flax seeds, Idaho honey and Idaho quinoa.
- RFK has a proclivity for boiled rat’s eyes, according to a 1984 book. Maybe he can find some in Eagle.
No wonder it was announced that no questions would be taken at the event. For prominent Republicans in the Trump era, dignity is a luxury few can afford. Shortly before the announcement that Kennedy would come to Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, announced that he had introduced a bill to rename the John F. Kennedy Center Opera House after Melania Trump.
The purpose of Wednesday’s event was to tout successes of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Accomplishments like getting fluoride out of the water in Utah, which Simpson knows will rot their teeth, and continuing to push down childhood vaccination rates, now at their lowest levels in years.
Measles, once nearly eliminated in the U.S., has been surging back to life, driven by vaccine skepticism that Kennedy, among others, has fueled. Idaho had a significant outbreak in 2023, and this year, rates are beginning to spike around the country.
Kennedy has been among the worst spreaders of vaccine denialism, leading to very serious consequences. As Dr. Alec Ekeroma, director-general of health in American Samoa, told the Associated Press, Kennedy played a key role in spreading fear of measles vaccines there, resulting in a subsequent wave of infections and deaths — 83 in a very small country. The population equivalent for Idaho would be a measles outbreak that killed more than 800 people, mostly infants and toddlers, in a year. Kennedy has denied that they even had measles at all.
Lies about medicine and general quackery can have serious consequences.
And not just for kids, but for the farmers and ranchers who form Little’s core constituency. Few groups of people, apart from CEOs and doctors, have been more frequent targets of Kennedy’s ire.
Kennedy believes that wheat grown in America poisoned his kids because it involves the use of the herbicide glyphosate. He claims his child’s eczema was cured by switching to pasta imported from Europe. (While the European Union does ban many herbicides and pesticides used in the U.S., glyphosate is not among them. It is commonly used there, as basically everywhere else in the developed word.)
Kennedy once called Monsanto “the enemy of every admirable American value.” Little has accepted their campaign cash and praised the company’s decision to open a wheat research center in the Magic Valley.
But times are changing, and Little clearly isn’t afraid to change with them.
If Little really wants to show leadership in the MAHA movement, he should direct the Idaho Department of Agriculture to regulate glyphosate use into oblivion, or seek an outright ban in the Legislature.
Close all of the feedlots.
Outlaw petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
End the poisoning of America’s children by pernicious Idaho farmers and ranchers. Nothing would make his new chum happier.