RFK Jr.’s Big Fat Lie
What’s happening: U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely credited President Donald Trump’s second administration with an historic decline in obesity rates, a claim that was amplified by 72 news websites associated with Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned TV stations.
Context: Speaking at a June 16, 2026, event in Michigan hosted by the conservative think tank America First Policy Institute, Kennedy said: “Since President Trump came into office, obesity rates in this country have dropped by 2.5 percent. That’s the first drop in 50 years.” Kennedy did not provide any source for these statistics.
- A video clip of Kennedy’s remarks was posted on June 16 by one of his office’s official X accounts, @HHSRapidResponse, generating 128,000 views and 2,500 likes.
- The next day, Sinclair’s National News Desk wire service, which supplies content to 177 Sinclair-owned television stations throughout the U.S., published an article titled “Secretary Kennedy says obesity has dropped 2.5% since Trump got into office.” The article quoted Kennedy saying, “That’s the first drop in 50 years.” The article, which did not challenge Kennedy’s claim, was republished on 72 websites operated by Sinclair between June 17 and 18, according to an analytics tool used by NewsGuard.
Actually: U.S. obesity rates have been decreasing in recent years, but that decline began during the Biden administration. Therefore, it is false to describe the current trend as only occurring since President Trump took office, or to say that it is the first decrease in half a century, as Kennedy claimed.
- Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index surveys — which include responses from approximately 5,000 adults each quarter — found that the U.S. obesity rate reached a high of 39.9 percent in 2022 and then declined to 38.4 percent in 2023 and 37.5 percent in 2024, when President Joe Biden was in office. Gallup’s October 2025 survey, nine months after Trump’s second term began, said the obesity rate had declined further, to 37 percent.
- Gallup suggested that the decline was in part due to increased use of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy.
Kennedy may have based his claim on a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published in February 2026 that included data up to August 2023 — again, during the Biden administration.
- The CDC report, which relied on 5,200 survey respondents, said the obesity rate among adults dropped from 42.8 percent in 2017-2018 to 40.3 percent between August 2021 and August 2023 — a 2.5 percent decrease. The CDC has not yet released any obesity rate data collected during Trump’s second term.
None of that countervailing evidence was provided in the articles published by the Sinclair TV websites.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to two emails and a phone message from NewsGuard asking for Kennedy’s source for his claim. NewsGuard did not receive a response to emails sent to Sinclair corporate spokesperson Jessica Belucci and Sinclair senior vice president of news Scott Livingston. A phone message to Sinclair’s corporate office also did not draw a response.
Going deeper: NewsGuard has identified 120 provably false health claims promoted by Kennedy and the anti-vaccine nonprofit he founded, Children’s Health Defense, dating to 2016. Read the full list here.
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A Chinese network of fake accounts featuring attractive Asian women supposedly looking to marry Taiwanese men appears poised to target Taiwan’s November 2026 local elections, NewsGuard found. The network of 294 coordinated accounts on Meta’s Threads, which launched in May 2026, bears the hallmarks of a Chinese political influence campaign.
Although NewsGuard could not definitively link the campaign to the Chinese government, it includes accounts that appear to belong to a network previously used by Chinese influence operations to target Taiwan. The accounts bear multiple signs of coordination, including the same posting schedule, similar account handles, and a consistent focus on targeting Taiwanese men.
Read the full report here.
This newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
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