Yet online, a different narrative of his tenure was playing out as a small but vocal group of Kennedy’s supporters and former employees assailed top Trump administration advisers, claiming they were sabotaging him and redirecting MAHA away from its original goals.
“MAHA is not MAHA anymore,” Gray Delany, a former Department of Health and Human Services official ousted in August, said in a podcast interview that day. “I’m not there, but what I’ve heard of what’s happening today is not the MAHA that we signed up for.”
The criticisms, which grew loud enough that the health secretary took to social media to defend his colleagues two days later, exposed the cracks that are beginning to form within his coalition as it amasses power and broadens in scope.
Several of the environmental advocates and vaccine skeptics who helped propel Kennedy into politics have become impatient with what they view as inadequate action on their priorities. They’re also wary that the Health Department appears willing to collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, tech firms and other big corporations whose motives they don’t trust.
The fissures pose a threat to the cohesion of a movement that has given President Donald Trump an important ally and Republicans access to a new group of voters. They come as cracks have developed in Trump’s own Make America Great Again movement over issues like the Epstein files and the White House’s focus on global diplomacy.
