“Anyone who believes in the right to bear arms. To stand up against your government. I don’t know what you were saving that gun for then. I don’t know when you planned on using it if they were going to take control of your own body away. It’s now. Now’s the time.”
In January 2022 as the Omicron variant filled up pediatric hospitals, MAHA/MAGA royalty Del Bigtree had threatening words for those who tried to keep children healthy. Speaking at a Defeat the Mandates rally, he threatened doctors, Democrats, Fauci, Biden, and the “press” with Nuremberg style trials, after which Nazi war criminals went to the gallows.
Over 10 years ago Dr. David Gorski wrote an article titled The Violent Rhetoric of the Antivaccine Movement. This was followed up by The Violent Rhetoric Of The Antivaccine Movement, Vaxxed Edition, The Violent Rhetoric Of The Antivaccine Movement: ‘Vaccine Holocaust’ And Potential Impending Attacks On Journalists, and The Violent Rhetoric Of The Antivaccine Movement Intensifies. Some of us have been keeping track of these characters for years and we know this was not Bigtree’s first time making such despicable threats. In the video below, from 2016, Bigtree compared his fate to Jews in Nazi Germany, a recurring theme, and said:
Anyone who believes in the right to bear arms. To stand up against your government. I don’t know what you were saving that gun for then. I don’t know when you planned on using it if they were going to take control of your own body away.
It’s now. Now’s the time.
While normal people are appalled by such violent rhetoric, opportunistic content creators sensed the potential for great theater and greeted Bigtree with a smile and outstretched arms. Even though an anti-vaxx terrorist shot up the CDC and Fauci’s children needed bodyguards, Bigtree’s rageful threats weren’t a deal breaker for the hosts of the Why Should I Trust You? podcast. These exemplars of the Opinion Class provided him with a friendly forum which they marketed thusly:
A longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bigtree is a singular presence—an expert communicator, storyteller, and filmmaker with a reach of tens of millions. To fans and supporters, he’s a charismatic fighter taking on the chronic illness crisis and exposing corruption. His critics say he is a spreader of anti-vaccine misinformation.
We discuss politics, the future goals of MAHA, America’s vaccine policies, bodily autonomy, and activism. It is a free-wheeling, occasionally raucous, but respectful conversation with one of the most important voices in MAHA today.
Of course, Bigtree’s critics say he is a spreader of anti-vaccine misinformation, because he is a spreader of anti-vaccine misinformation. That’s his profession, and his views are well-known.
None of this was a bridge too far for the hosts of Why Should I Trust You?, however. In their view Bigtree’s anti-vaxx propaganda, noxious exploitation of the Holocaust, and vile threats could be overlooked because there was no higher value than the podcast itself. The free-wheeling, occasionally raucous, but respectful conversation was the end-goal, infinitely more important than the on-the-ground consequences of that “conversation.” Although hospitals need metal detectors and children are getting measles encephalitis, that’s someone else’s problem. The show must go on!
“Consider for a moment the possibility that shunning them might only reinforce the message they hear about you: that public health is elitist, institutionalist, and doesn’t have your back.”
Just because the hosts of Why Should I Trust You? yawned at Bigtree’s menacing threats, this does not mean they are unwilling to take a firm stand against speech they deem problematic, however. They do have strict standards it turns out, but only for critics of the MAHA/MAGA agenda.
Two of the podcast hosts, Brinda Adhikari and Tom Johnson, recently penned a defense of Dr. Craig Spencer and his article Public Health Needs MAHA. (Dr. David Gorski, Dr. Jeremy Faust, and the Pandemic Accountability Index wrote much stronger responses.)
After listing some of the ways that Trump and Kennedy have attacked STEM, Adhikar and Johnson got to their core point- the science-based community needs to prioritize the feelings of the people who supported, enabled, and funded those attacks. They wrote:
But what is also clear is that public health all too frequently equates the millions of people who support some part of this movement with the actions of the administration.
Adhikar and Johnson continued:
Let’s be clear. The Democrats abandoned them. Two former Democratic presidential candidates have come on our podcast saying as much (Sen. Cory Booker and former congressman Tim Ryan). The party decided that this movement of Americans had to be stopped because of the anti-vaccine beliefs of some of its followers. That meant the party lost potential allies in the fight for the environment, healthier food, nutrition, access to preventive care, and against the systemic causes of chronic disease….
What are you going to do, kick them out of your clinics? Remove them from your conferences? Label them all anti-vaxxers and wait for them to leave the public sphere? Pretend they don’t exist? Consider for a moment the possibility that shunning them might only reinforce the message they hear about you: that public health is elitist, institutionalist, and doesn’t have your back.
Lashing out at a movement of people who have begun to break with this administration, and enter a search for a new political and ideological home, one that prioritizes many of the things you prioritize, seems to us like a mistake. Definitionally, you need to demonstrate that you see a difference between MAHA leadership and supporters of an insurgent health movement that yes, maybe you don’t totally see eye to eye with, but you recognize that they have tapped into something that we need to finally admit, the rest of us have not.
And rather than pile on a public health veteran who is calling for others in his field to find common ground with MAHA where it is possible, while rejecting the dangerous, unscientific elements, perhaps it is time to do a little mindset change ourselves. We cannot afford to keep waiting for the exact right cast of characters to come along in order to listen to the country as it is and fight for them.
41% of the US population say they identify with the MAHA movement’s platform. You can and should fight Trump’s and Kennedy’s destructive policies, while still bringing these supporters into a dialogue. They are not a monolith. And neither are you. It’s the smart thing to do.
Only professional podcasters could write something this ignorant. As those of us who operate in the real-world know, there is a world of difference between how we strive to treat MAHA/MAGA patients in ERs and clinics- with professionalism, kindness, and understanding- versus how we treat MAHA/MAGA leaders, ideas, and policies in the public sphere.
Furthermore, an obvious question emerges. Who exactly is “shunning” and “lashing out” at MAHA/MAGA acolytes? Adhikar and Johnson don’t say, and they provided no examples. It’s an article of faith amongst reactionary centrists that “elitist” public health figures have ruthlessly attacked well-intentioned citizens and thus the loss of trust in their field is both expected and well-deserved.
The obvious truth is that there’s been a well-funded, highly organized, years-long campaign specifically to spread mistrust in public health. It succeeded, and today Adhikar and Johnson blame public health officials for that success. Even though right-wing disinformation agents never hid their intention, literally making videos titled Stop Trusting the Public Health Establishment, Adhikar and Johnson give them a free pass. As Michael Hobbes said sarcastically about Dr. Spencer’s original article:
The piece also has a ton of victim blaming. It’s not the anti-science movement’s fault that public opinion has shifted against public health, it’s the public health authorities they’re constantly lying about!
Exactly.
However, instead of unequivocally calling out and exposing these merchants of doubt, Adhikar and Johnson routinely invite them on their podcast. They had a Special Episode: A Conversation with Dr. John Ioannidis and A Conversation with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: On the NIH, CDC, Funding, DEI & His Vision For Doing Science. Those are familiar names to SBM readers.
They promised an “honest, no-holds-barred conversation about the breakdown in trust on all sides,” to promote their episode with crank Dr. Bret Weinstein, another of their guests who has shared his hanging fantasies. All sides! “Respectful dialogue can help rebuild trust in one another,” they added, without providing a shred of evidence that their precious “dialogue” with vengeful disinformation superspreaders has actually helped “rebuild trust”. They expect us to just trust them about this.
While I am under no illusion that Adhikar and Johnson were specifically talking about SBM in their defense of Dr. Spencer, we are obviously familiar with the issues they raise. Although they seem unaware of it, there’s been no shortage of soul-searching and self-flagellation in public health and science communication. It’s been going on for years, well before the pandemic, and we do not reflexively circle the wagons when members of our profession espouse disinformation or fail to protect the public against bad-faith actors.
Moreover, while we unsparingly call out professional anti-vaxxers, we generally have sympathy for their victims. We don’t “shun” or “lash out” at regular people doing their best to navigate a confusing information landscape, one that is confusing precisely because of honored guests on the Why Should I Trust You? podcast.
This approach isn’t unique to SBM. Sure, there are some jerks out there, but every prominent science communicator I can think of is similarly respectful towards the victims of misinformation, and the mere existence of our content is an indication of that respect. We know people can learn and change their minds. To that end, we’ve created countless articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts that refute misinformation and provide the facts in a neutral, judgement-free manner. Most of us do this on our own time, for free, and we’ve been doing it for years, even decades.
This is exactly the kind of outreach Adhikar and Johnson claim to value, but don’t acknowledge, and it can be effective. For example, Heather Simpson, a former anti-vaccine influencer who now promotes vaccines, had this to say about vaccine-champion Dr. Vincent Iannelli and his website Vaxopedia:
Was pediatrician Dr. Vincent Iannelli among the doctors who gave you the information you needed?
Simpson: “Yes. He runs Vaxopedia, and I would absorb so much information off his website. And I found out he was local. And so when we decided to get my daughter vaccinated, we went to him first, and I was freaking out the whole time.
“But he was very calm, and I think he told me, you know, ‘Reach out if she even hiccups weird,’ like, ‘We got you.’ I didn’t feel abandoned. I felt like, ‘Hey, this is not just to me. This is a community, you know, watching her,’ and I joked that she had more energy and more of an appetite after her vaccine than before.”
Adhikar and Johnson ignore all of that hard work. All previous efforts at engagement and outreach mean nothing to them. They pretend MAHA/MAGA acolytes were abandon to the wolves and there were no trustworthy voices to be found. They say that we need to “listen to the country as it is and fight for them”, though of course many us have been trying to do that for years, long before they became interested in the topic. Instead of discussing the efforts to provide people with accurate medical and scientific information, they become scolds towards those people instead. They give great credence to the claim that public health is elitist, institutionalist, and doesn’t have your back.
This means however, that no one who falls for medical misinformation can claim they lacked the resources to learn the facts. While we recognize that innocent children are hurt by anti-vaxxers, their parents are not innocent children themselves. We can acknowledge they were tricked by the anti-vaccine movement without infantilizing them in the process. While shaming people purely to shame them should never be the goal, these parents were autonomous adults who made bad decisions that harmed their children. Even after this, some of them are encouraging others to make the same mistake. That’s appalling, and we don’t need anyone’s permission to simply be honest about this.
Adhikar and Johnson don’t see it that way, however. They portray MAHA/MAGA acolytes as blameless toddlers, without agency, without responsibility, passive victims of forces they don’t understand and can’t control. In their view, MAHA/MAGA acolytes are simpletons who can’t possibly be asked to understand us, and conversely, their mental defects obligate us, the only ones with autonomy, to constantly bend over backwards to understand and coddle them.
They assign no blame to the people who unleashed Trump and Kennedy on us all. Adhikar and Johnson feel these people have to be pampered and catered to in July 2026, specifically by those of us who were right about MAHA/MAGA the whole time. It’s our fault we tried to warn them, and we have work to do to make it up to them.
Adhikar and Johnson have tasked us with demonstrating that we see a difference between MAHA leadership and supporters of an insurgent health movement. It’s our job to bring MAHA/MAGA supporters into a dialogue. While we need a little mindset change, the people who unleashed Trump and Kennedy have no need to introspect and reflect on how their choices impacted us all. Whereas Bigtree and Weinstein can make violent threats against us, we must be ultracareful not to “shun” their supporters.
Once again Adhikar and Johnson treat the discourse, rather than the real-world consequences of that discourse, as the core value that must be protected at all costs. Sure, measles and explosive diarrhea are spreading, but what really matters is not to hurt the feelings of the people who made this possible.
Everyone obviously says they support a clean environment, healthier food, nutrition, access to preventive care, and children free of chronic disease. MAHA/MAGA acolytes are not special boys and girls for simply claiming to care about these issues, and they don’t have unique insights as Adhikar and Johnson absurdly claimed – “they have tapped into something that we need to finally admit, the rest of us have not”. As Melody Schreiber put it, “This is literally what public health already does.” MAHA/MAGA is trying to destroy what public health already does, and many guests on Why Should I Trust You? podcast have enabled that destruction.
As such, my willingness to find “common ground” with MAHA/MAGA acolytes requires them to stop being MAHA/MAGA acolytes. Although Adhikar and Johnson didn’t acknowledge it, those who abandon MAHA/MAGA, like the former anti-vaccine influencer Heather Simpson, are greeted with open arms. They are not shunned or shamed. Good! No one needs to publicly abase themselves, and we should always extend grace to people who have the courage to change their minds. They have a valuable perspective and can likely reach people we cannot.
However outside of the exam room, I am not obligated to meet devoted MAHA/MAGA acolytes where they are and cautiously tiptoe around their brittle emotions. Trump’s and Kennedy’s obvious attacks on STEM are a deal breaker, and anyone who claims these men have viable solutions in July 2026 is not someone who is going to be convinced by anything I’ve got to say anyways. I’ve written two books and nearly 350 articles here trying to convince them already. There is no magical combination of words that I or anyone else can utter that will change their minds. It’s all been uttered 1,000 times already.
At this point, we need to be clear that no matter what they say, anyone who still supports MAHA/MAGA is working against a clean environment, healthier food, nutrition, access to preventive care, and children free of chronic disease. Those of us who genuinely support these goals, as opposed to making podcasts about them, need to oppose MAHA/MAGA with everything we’ve got. Regardless of its empty pablum about “gold standard science” and “eating real food“, the horrific actions of MAHA/MAGA speak for themselves. That’s all that matters, and we don’t need permission from podcast hosts to remember the bad faith actors who empowered it. To again quote Michael Hobbes:
The actual harsh truth about MAHA is that it is an anti-vaxx, anti-science, pro-diarrhea conspiracy movement. It cloaks its arguments in abstractions about “big pharma” and “free speech” to generate the exact op-ed The Atlantic keeps publishing. Movements like this need to be fought, not placated.
Exactly. MAHA/MAGA is above all dangerous. Scientists are getting arrested and being abused and threatened by powerful government figures. However by treating MAHA/MAGA as a curious plaything to be discussed and debated, the Why Should I Trust You? podcast numbs its listeners to that danger.
It turns out discourse isn’t the top priority after all, and sheltered pundits who can’t recognize this aren’t worthy of your trust. I’d be happy to elaborate further on the Why Should I Trust You? podcast. However, while its hosts are willing to politely embrace anti-vaxxers who profit by sickening children and promoting violent revenge fantasies, something tells me their commitment to “respectful dialogue” doesn’t extend that far.