Vice President JD Vance and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boasted over artificial intelligence‘s efforts to offer second opinions and serve as a check against health experts at a Make America Healthy Again-themed fireside chat on Tuesday.
“One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us trust the experts,” said Kennedy, garnering applause from the crowd gathered at the Waldorf Astoria.
“Every American will be able to check their own medical advice. They’ll also be able to check the advice of public officials, and if somebody tells you masks work, trust the experts. AI may tell you otherwise,” Kennedy continued. “If somebody tells you social distancing works, trust the experts. AI may correct that.”
At the MAHA summit, Vance and Kennedy sought to appeal to a group that helped boost the GOP during the 2024 election but is in danger of staying out of the 2026 cycle due to differences with the Trump administration.
Kennedy told the attendees that AI will help patients better understand their health records and even give a second opinion if wanted.
“By the time we leave, every American will have access on their cell phones to their own medical records,” said Kennedy. “And you may have a medical record that’s a thousand pages long. You have six minutes with a doctor today. He’s not going to be able to review it, but the AI can, and he can distill it. It can distill it. It can give you a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country.”
Kennedy also claimed that AI “really has the capacity to dominate us, to free us from medical tyranny” such as the mandated vaccines that are required for schools and job employment.
“If somebody tells you that vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, oh, you need to take it to protect your grandmother. AI may say it actually doesn’t do that,” he said.
Vance agreed with the secretary’s opinions, adding that “the experts are not the experts in the same way; they don’t have the same control or monopoly on knowledge.”
The vice president noted that earlier Tuesday he attended an AI-themed luncheon at the White House that included many of the nation’s top business and tech leaders who signed a “morally binding” agreement to self-regulate AI.
“I talked to a guy literally this morning at the president’s AI luncheon who told me that he used artificial intelligence to develop a new treatment model for his wife,” said Vance. “Who herself was going through a cancer treatment. The doctors basically said there’s nothing that’s going to be able to help you. He came up with a combination of drugs, got the doctor’s buy-in, and now his wife is alive when he didn’t expect that she would be alive.”
The all-day summit, hosted by the tax-exempt MAHA Center organization, comes as grassroots activists in the movement have expressed feeling betrayed by President Donald Trump and his health secretary for giving in to pressure from corporate interests.
The MAHA grassroots began to split from the Trump administration earlier this year when the president issued an executive order to increase domestic production of glyphosate. The Department of Justice also backed Bayer, the owner of Monsanto, which makes the pesticide glyphosate, in the Monsanto Co. v. Durnell case over whether Roundup weed killer causes cancer.
MAHA activists were also upset over the summit’s speaker list, corporate sponsors, and topic themes, including AI’s impact on healthcare, which they claimed weren’t a priority for them.
“The MAHA Summit lineup does not reflect the issues that birthed the original MAHA movement and drove voters, especially women, to show up and vote for this coalition,” regenerative farming advocate Kelly Ryerson previously told the Washington Examiner via email. “I don’t recognize this version of MAHA.”
Democrats are now vying to woo over disillusioned MAHA voters before the midterm elections.
Abdul el Sayed, the Senate nominee in Michigan and a doctor, released a new policy platform branded as the Building A Healthier America Policy Agenda to tackle removing pesticides in food, holding polluters accountable, and removing lead and microplastics from water.
“Abdul wants to implement the right solutions to make a healthier America because he does not take contributions from the very corporations who profit from stuffing our food with ultra-processed junk,” the campaign said in a press release.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a potential 2028 presidential candidate, pushed his party members in May to embrace key MAHA policies such as combating the unhealthiness of the American diet.
MAHA ACTIVISTS UPSET OVER CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP FOR SUMMIT FEATURING RFK JR. AND VANCE
But Vance’s appearance at the summit is likely meant to help smooth over tensions and subtly assure the MAHA movement that the Trump administration is still in their corner. Several other Trump administration officials spoke at the event, including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.
Earlier in the summit, Felipe Millon, head of the Government Go to Market division of OpenAI, previewed Kennedy’s remarks at the fireside chat when he claimed “It is medical malpractice not to get a second opinion from AI today, and it is — these models are so good.”