327: AOC Meets MAHA

Conspirituality

The episode examines Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's strategic outreach to the 'Make America Healthy Again' (MAHA) movement to find common ground on corporate

Key takeaways

AOC is attempting to build bridges with MAHA activists on non-partisan issues like pesticides and corporate power.
The MAHA movement has successfully targeted women and mothers through social media and podcasting.

Main topics

AOC and MAHA outreach
RFK Jr. political rhetoric

Notable quotes

Health, personal, public, and environmental are not partisan.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a warning about the dangers of political pragmat

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land. We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (0:35) We've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode, The Jordan Harbinger Show, a podcast you should definitely check out since you're Speaker 1 (0:43) a Speaker 7 (0:43) fan of high-quality, fascinating podcasts hosted by interesting people. The show covers a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy-hitting guests, and there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting since you're a fan of this show. I'd recommend our listeners check it out. We have a fair amount of overlap. You know, Jordan recently did an episode on remote viewing and how the U.S. government spent millions of dollars on this ESP pseudoscience. You might also look up an episode called Saving Bro's Soul from Alt-Right Rabbit Hole. Anyway, you can't go wrong with adding the Jordan Harbinger show to your rotation. It's incredibly interesting. There's never a dull show. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Speaker 4 (1:22) show. That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 2 (1:45) Conspiratuality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris. Speaker 3 (1:55) I'm Matthew Remsky. I'm Julian Walker. Speaker 7 (1:57) You Speaker 2 (1:57) can find us collectively on Instagram at ConspiratualityPod. And you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon at patreon.com slash conspirituality. You can also grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really value your support. Speaker 7 (2:33) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been meeting with Maha activists in an attempt to bring the coalition to the Democratic Party. Recent reporting reveals that she's been meeting or trying to meet with some close to RFK Jr., as well as those Speaker 4 (2:47) who have been critical of the HHS secretary. It might be a sound political strategy, but what happens when you start courting conspiracy theorists? Derek looks into that in segment one. Then I'll look at where Maha currently is in segment two, based on two recent Kennedy appearances. Matthew returns to AOC in segment three to ask how the DSA might assess her Maha pivot. Speaker 6 (3:17) What do you make of the Maha movement then? Because our hypothesis, or at least mine has been on the show, that these charlatans are able to fill a vacuum because there's so much anxiety that people have with the health care system. I agree completely. Yeah. If you want to expand on that, go ahead. Speaker 5 (3:34) Yeah. I mean, I actually meet with Maha activists. I work with Maha advocates because a lot of them really, don't believe that their fight is partisan and it's not in many ways. We do have extraordinary corruption in our agricultural system, in our big corporate system as well, you know, and this is an area where both parties and our entire political system has been compromised. Speaker 2 (4:08) That's AOC talking to the Majority Report on July 30th about her relationship with Maha activists. That segment was followed up by Politico, which published an article on September 5th entitled Inside AOC's Maha Outreach. They discover that she's been reaching out to them throughout the spring, and they write, Speaker 7 (4:30) Ocasio-Cortez still has significant differences with the broader Maha movement, including its vaccine skepticism, but she sees areas of overlap on things like pesticides, corporate power, and access to safe food, according to a person close to AOC, who, like others, were granted Speaker 4 (4:47) anonymity to describe private conversations and meetings. They describe the meetings as a chance both to listen and to brainstorm. about how the two sides might build a movement together around such issues. I Speaker 2 (5:01) agree with AOC that health, personal, public, and environmental are not partisan. It's actually been one of the most frustrating aspects of Trump's rise, which is the number of voters who have been or will be harmed by his complete disregard of health and how his lackey, RFK Jr., has served as a mouthpiece. Telling Americans not to believe their lying eyes as they gut the agencies and programs that are designed to protect us. Speaker 3 (5:28) You know, Derek, I have a question off the top here. I apologize before we get rolling. But when AOC says, and then you agree, that health ecological concerns are not partisan, like, is this just meant to say that on first blush, people can find common ground on the basics? I'm asking because... I think it's easy to say that people from across the political spectrum are concerned about food and farms. But I mean, in 30 seconds, you're talking about strategies. So what does it mean that they're not partisan? Speaker 2 (6:00) Well, first off, obviously, I've talked about the social determinants of health for a long time. So they do cross partisan lines depending on where you live and your income level and things like that. This morning, I was listening to Morning Joe and they were doing a recap of Trump's visit with Mamdani. And one thing really jumped out at me when the mayor of New York says, I will work with anyone who will bring benefits to New York City. And that includes the Trump administration. And it also reminds me, there's a really good episode, really scary of John Oliver this week, who's talking about UnitedHealthcare, my former insurer. And I discovered that Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley have been working on a bill to stop vertical integration in healthcare since February, actually, which I was not aware of. So sometimes, you know, I hate most everything about Josh Hawley, including his ridiculous book about masculinity. But if he's going to stop UnitedHealthcare from being the number three market cap company in America. which it currently is above Apple and Alphabet, you know, there are strange bedfellows here. So these are issues, and we're talking about healthcare today, but there are many of them that affect every single American. And sometimes you get into bed with people that otherwise you might not want to, but that actually works out. Speaker 7 (7:24) And Speaker 2 (7:24) let me chime in Speaker 7 (7:24) here too, because I feel like when I hear that it's not partisan, In a way, I hear it as saying, hey, look, MAGA has tried to, they've tried to grab the sort of position of like, we're in favor of making America healthy again. We're the ones who are really pushing back against Speaker 4 (7:42) the corruption of big pharma, et cetera, et cetera. And the Democrats are on the other side. And it's like, but actually. As you said, Derek, what MAGA is doing and what MAHA is party to is terrible for the health of most Americans, including having health care coverage. So it's like it's not as if the partisan divide breaks down in the way that we're being told. I Speaker 3 (8:05) feel like we're saying we have human needs and they can be politicized in deep directions and in different directions. but the needs remain. Is that basically it? Speaker 2 (8:15) Yes, absolutely. And in fact, just this morning, Reuters reported that 760,000 Americans were kicked off of Obamacare last month. And that cuts, that's not just Democrats, that's just Republicans. That's 760,000 Americans lost health insurance because this administration is following Project 2025 and their own wins. Speaker 7 (8:38) But I feel like just reducing it to human needs makes it sound banal. I mean, really, what I hear AOC saying is that these people have gotten propagandized into believing they should hitch their wagon to Speaker 4 (8:49) the MAGA project because these are the champions of health. And so it becomes a partisan issue in a way that is actually deeply distorted. And if she can negotiate with them, talk to them, hear their concerns, understand where the overlaps are, then she can maybe win some of those people back because it's not actually as partisan as it is. they've been led to believe with the Republicans as their heroes. I Speaker 3 (9:11) think my problem is, is that, is that it is nonpartisan from the standpoint of everybody suffering, right? It becomes partisan on the, from the direction of, of trying to work towards something or having ideas going in a particular direction to improve things, right? Speaker 7 (9:28) Yeah, no, that's right. That is right. Speaker 3 (9:30) Yeah. It's nonpartisan because like we're, we're all fucking, it all sucks here. Right. But yeah. Speaker 7 (9:36) Yeah, so you basically, this is the first moment in which we'll acknowledge AOC as a politician who says the things that she needs to say based on where she stands in any particular kind of contextual, strategic sort of set of goals that she's trying to accomplish, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:52) Yeah, and I'm split on this as I'll get into because I understand someone wanting to build bridges and yet, well, let's get into now who she's building bridges with, which is problematic. So Politico discovered that she was meeting with Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt. We've covered her often. And former Missouri Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell, who is the president of Farm Action Fund, which is a nonpartisan organization focused on fighting agricultural consolidation and corporate control of the food supply. And he also focuses on returning power and profits to independent farmers. Apparently, AOC also reached out to Kelly Ryerson, who is known as the glyphosate girl, and Vani Hari, another Conspiratuality Greatest Hit, the food babe. Though according to Politico, they were wary of anything that could strain their standing with Trump. So that's another level there. There's risk all around, right? They got to feel around each other. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I'm Speaker 3 (10:54) going Speaker 2 (10:54) to return to my thoughts about her AOC trying to work with those figures specifically. First, I want to go through AOC's history with health issues and public health because it's not like she's just dabbling in health. It's kind of part of her origin story. So after the Politico story dropped, Fox News immediately speculated that she's courting Maha voters for a 2020 presidential run, which could absolutely be true. but it does distract from her long history of advocating for a healthier society. Before she even made it to Congress in 2018, she discussed her father's death from lung cancer in 2008. Her family was severely strained financially, and she uses this as the origin myth of her healthcare politics. She's also repeatedly discussed working as a bartender and waitress with no health insurance of her own. So when she ran to replace Joe Crowley in 2018, single-payer health care became her signature issue. The following year, as Congresswoman, she co-sponsored Representative Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All Act, and then, of course, her Green New Deal resolution, something the right has used to attack her for ever since. She's been holistic in her thinking on health and public health. The same year, 2019, she framed gun violence as tied to white supremacist radicalization at a Brooklyn vigil, and she said manhood should not be equated to owning guns. During the early days of the pandemic, she pushed for expanded testing and PPE, criticized gaps in the federal response, and helped organize a mutual aid network connecting constituents with food, medicine, and check-ins. She's been a COVID vaccine advocate ever since they dropped on the market. Less than a month after the January 6th terrorist attack on the Capitol, she disclosed that she is a sexual assault survivor on Instagram Live, which is why she said she hid in fear during the riot. She said that trauma can intersect and interact and that she was seeking help to heal from what she experienced that day. Then, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, she appeared at an abortion rights protest framing abortion access as core healthcare policy. Jump ahead a year. She pushed for insulin price cap and pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts, something that might have happened had Elon Musk not publicly attacked them. She became a vocal critic of for-profit Medicare Advantage practices, which to be clear is not Medicare. It is its for-profit sort of cousin that loms onto it. And she was also worried about growing private equity influence in healthcare delivery, which specifically goes back to that Elizabeth Warren-Josh Hawley act that I mentioned, legislation that I mentioned a few moments ago. During Trump 2.0, she repeatedly criticized Kennedy's anti-vax stances. She called the Big Beautiful Bill the largest and greatest loss of health care in American history. She cited a projected 17 million Americans losing coverage and tying the Medicaid, ACA, and SNAP cuts to financing tax breaks. That ties into what I just said a few moments ago about three quarters of a million Americans losing health care last month. And she's been warning about the right sinister attempts to privatize Medicare. I should also note that I've seen TikToks where AOC dabbles in wellness. I remember one where she criticized the FDA for not approving new sunscreen filters, whereas the EU has been way ahead of the game for some time. And that catches us up to today. So given all this history, I'm not surprised that she would cultivate relationships with Maha activists. According to Politico, a MAHA insider connected her with others in the movement, and they noted that environmental and health issues have historically been the province of the left. And I mean, it still kind of is. So when she was talking to Majority Report, she explains how MAGA co-opted the health movement specifically by targeting women. Speaker 5 (15:08) So much hay made about like bro podcasts, and that's where they ran up the numbers. Yeah. And I think that the media. has just as much of a misogynistic blind spot as anywhere else. I mean, they are the misogynistic blind spot in many ways. You've never experienced that. And so, but the cost of that is that I actually think a lot of it was Maha. I think that there was very little political analysis done on how they really focused on women, on moms, on... Speaker 5 (15:48) radicalizing and doing a lot of persuasion in an electorate that was much more swingy than, to be frank, white male voters. Those are generally broken more strongly towards Republicans. But they really focused a lot on women and they have had probably the biggest betrayals with the glyphosate rulings, with their complete. throwing in with big ag and Monsanto and Bayer, including coordinating with the Supreme Court and all of that. And so I think their political vulnerabilities are in, we want to focus on corruption in the ways that undermine their promises. And we want to go after investigations that cut off the supply of their illicit money flows. You Speaker 3 (16:42) know, I. I don't think AOC heard our podcast at all over the last couple of years because actually we did do that. She's saying Speaker 7 (16:52) what we said. Yeah. As if no one ever said it. Speaker 3 (16:54) Yeah. I mean, I mean, she is she is right. I think we are a very minority voice with regard to having tracked the. you know, the radicalization pipeline of Maha that focused on women for sure. Speaker 7 (17:07) Yeah. And, and in a way she's, she's, she's picking up a theme that, that, you know, we've talked about a lot, right, Matthew, that conspiracy theorists are not wrong, that there are all these different inequities and exploitations and, and, you know, ways in which working people have been screwed over and ways in which Speaker 4 (17:22) women have been discriminated against. And they've, they've just, you know, come up with. a lot of wrong explanations and strategies for how to try to feel better about that and create positive change. And so I fully support whatever, you know, legitimate issues she identifies and wants to champion in a way that they feel positive about while at the same time feeling out certain people where it's like, eh, it turns out that's not such a good match because you're allowed to do that. Speaker 3 (17:49) Well, I think Derek, your survey of her actual record. is really hopeful with regard to pulling the Maha crowd out of the mirror world, to use Naomi Klein's term. Exactly. And Speaker 2 (18:02) to your initial point, I'll just say Psychology Today just this morning published an article, a column on this new phenomenon called conspirituality. So, and they did cite us, they did cite us. But, you know, people, you know, we are a minority voice, but people who've been listeners for a long time know we've been tracking this for a while. Now, I do think her framing is important because her concern beyond health is corruption being done in the name of health, which I think gets to the heart of it here. Now, we spent all of 2024 yelling about Project 2025's deregulatory goals. We've been seeing them play out for nearly two years now. And I'm still floored at the blatant mismatch between Maha's rhetoric and their legislation. Just last week, Kennedy was the keynote speaker alongside Andrew Wakefield at a children's health defense event in D.C. Julian Clips from it in segment two today. And he spoke about, well, I don't want to give anything away, but chemtrails, chemtrails. This is mere days after the EPA eliminated rules that limit planet warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. So you have the idea that water vapor from airplanes is toxic, yet power plants are not. And that's the type of contradiction that is wearing very thin.