The British comedian Russell Brand will face trial in London in two weeks on multiple charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault against several women years ago.
But first, allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy thought it would be a good idea to invite Brand to moderate a panel at their “MAHA Summit” in Washington yesterday, where he would vouch for the upstanding character of Kennedy and Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
It went about as well as you’d expect.
“Russell Brand was backstage hugging the secretary of agriculture,” Oz announced when he took the stage; the secretary, Brooke Rollins, had just finished her panel. “Took MAHA to a whole new level.”
Brand emerged from the behind-the-curtain embrace. “She initiated that contact,” he said.
Brand, who has pleaded not guilty to assaulting the women (though he admitted to having sex with a 16-year-old when he was 30), joked his way through the session. He then led Oz down from the stage for a photo with Kennedy, who was in the audience. The accused rapist, shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel, threw his arm around the secretary.
“Say MAHA now!” he told the crowd.
“MAHA!” they obliged.
Brand then addressed the two men. “Your character cannot be questioned,” he said. Oz, he gushed, is “a beautiful man” and Kennedy “is devoted to what he does. … Thank you very much, Dr. Oz. Thank you, secretary. Love you.”
It was enough to Make America Heave Again.
Even before Brand made his appearance, there was plenty of cause for queasiness at the MAHA Summit.
The MAHA organizers had asked corporations to pay as much as $300,000 to sponsor the event. In exchange, Bloomberg News reported, they were offered “meaningful input on the panel composition and topic” along with a private dinner for 30 guests with Kennedy and Oz.
Grail Inc. paid for the highest sponsorship, earning its CEO, Joshua Ofman, a spot on the 10 a.m. panel. He made the pitch for his cancer-screening blood test — which, by total and complete coincidence, an FDA panel recommended for approval last week.
“What would be the biggest policy change that you think we could make?” the moderator asked him.
“It’s, you know, getting this through the regulatory process,” Ofman said, so that “these things are covered by the medical benefits in Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance.” He suggested they “speed up that process.”
In the very next session, Alec Aramanda, an Oz deputy, moderated a panel with three insurance executives, from UnitedHealth, Elevance (a Blue Cross Blue Shield network) and the industry trade group.
The officials insisted that their prior-authorization hurdles are “very selectively used.” They claimed they were focused on preventing chronic disease. They said they wanted to “make it simpler for folks” to get their claims paid, to “empower our primary care doctors” and to avoid disputes with providers.
Never mind the mountains of evidence to the contrary. “Well said,” Aramanda responded, over and over. “Very well said.”
Earlier this month, at the Republicans’ midterm convention, Kennedy talked about how he and President Donald Trump share the goal of “ending corporate influence” and “unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies.”
Yesterday, we saw clearly that he has done the opposite. He has facilitated the corporate capture of the Make America Healthy Again movement.
The summit at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria, the former Trump International hotel, was packed with health insurers, drug and device makers, AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic, Walmart and several others flogging their wares. At least 15 sponsors wound up on panels, often joined by regulators from HHS, USDA, EPA or CMS.
Kennedy closed the summit by leading a rambling discussion with Vice President JD Vance, where they discussed everything from AI (Kennedy said it would be “malpractice for a doctor to make a diagnosis or to make a prescription without at least checking AI”) to Vance’s desire to have Oreo ice cream atop the food pyramid.
But at no time in the nine hours of programming did I hear a mention that the man behind the summit, publisher Tony Lyons, also gave Kennedy two book advances last year worth $4 million. Lyons was a major contributor to Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign and now bankrolls MAHA causes.
Some of the MAHA faithful have been howling about the betrayal.
“I don’t recognize this version of MAHA.”
“A cesspool of corporate interest.”
There probably would have been more such complaints from those who came to the summit, but organizers blocked several media organizations from attending.
Actually, they could have attended, if they paid $6,000 for an annual membership in MAHA Action, which offered “guaranteed attendance at the MAHA Summit.” Perhaps this is what Kennedy meant at his confirmation hearing when he promised “radical transparency.”
The corporate capture of MAHA is just one more way in which Americans who believed Trump’s populist promises are finding they’ve been had.
They heard about ending “stupid, endless wars,” but now see the United States bogged down in Iran.
They heard about sticking up for the “forgotten men and women” but now see billionaires regularly parading through the White House.
They heard about how China “ripped off” America but now see Trump prostrating himself before the Chinese leader.
They heard promises to lower prices but now see the cost of living exploding.
They heard about draining the swamp and now see unprecedented levels of corruption.
Kennedy is yet to achieve most of the MAHA aims, though he has encouraged eating more saturated fat and discouraged getting childhood vaccines. “We have no idea what the risk profile is for these products,” he claimed in a Sept. 17 speech to the anti-vaccine group he founded. His (commendable) efforts to crack down on ultra-processed foods have been repeatedly blocked by the White House, which is reportedly concerned about harm to the food industry.
Instead, the Trump administration has been rolling back controls on pollution and chemical toxins, while killing public health capabilities and access to health care and nutrition aid. Five million people were dropped from food stamps in 2025 and 2026, and similar numbers were cut from Medicaid, while another 5 million no longer have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
The defunding of AIDS treatments for Africa is expected to result in the deaths of millions of people. The CDC has reportedly shed 30% of its staff, reducing its ability to respond to everything from the measles outbreak to chronic diseases, and similar cuts at the FDA and USDA have limited their responses to contaminated food outbreaks.
But Kennedy has been living his best life: accepting $250,000 worth of free flights to Fiji and Greece and the use of a vacation home, as The Wall Street Journal reported, taking military aircraft for campaign-related travel and shifting funds from the Office of Minority Health to pay for his security.
He is said to keep a light schedule at the office, but he has found time to whip up debunked concerns that contrails, water-vapor condensation from jets in the sky, are in fact “chemtrails” that poison people on Earth.
In the absence of tangible progress, Kennedy has invented some. “Since President Trump took office, obesity is down by 7% after 40 years of increasing,” he declared at the convention. In reality, obesity has been declining for the past four years, and Kennedy was almost certainly taking credit for the effect of GLP-1 drugs, which he initially opposed. He also announced that “we have now reversed a 30-year decline in longevity” — although life expectancy had hit a record high in 2024.
There were no doubt many earnest and well-intended people at the summit, just as there are many in the MAHA movement who are all about improving what we eat and how much we exercise — the things that would make America healthier. And there was much to learn from the longevity experts offering balance exercises and Mike Tyson talking with other athletes about the benefits of hyperbaric chambers, red light therapy and cold plunging.
Too bad it was dominated by a pay-to-play racket. Sponsors Definium Therapeutics, Helus Pharma, Compass Pathways, Hims & Hers, GameDay Men’s Health, ResMed, Sword Health, Candid Health, Sutter Health, Noom, Advocate Health and Hello Heart were among the event sponsors that secured positions for their executives on the panels — along with officials from sponsors Walmart, OpenAI and Anthropic.
In the fine print, the summit organizers said they didn’t “coordinate with any government entity.” Yet no fewer than 11 administration officials took the stage.
They were united in adoration of RFK Jr.
“He’s courageous, he’s curious, he’s compassionate,” said Oz.
“Secretary Kennedy, and the whole MAHA movement, has just made me a better parent,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“Bobby Kennedy has a beautiful view of history and time,” said HHS official Calley Means.
Finally, their hero emerged as the closing act with Vance. Surprisingly, Kennedy had little to say about Americans’ health, instead delivering a message about how the Biden administration enabled organized crime and “opened the floodgate to all this fraud” with a series of “perverse incentives.”
It was odd to hear Kennedy complain about “perverse incentives” at the end of a summit that amounted to one big shakedown of corporations seeking favorable government treatment. And it was odder still to hear about “fraud” from a guy who said he was all about “ending corporate influence” — but who instead is selling his movement to the highest bidder.
Dana Milbank is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
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