MAHA, Milk, and Middle Fingers

When federal health messaging goes full Florida Man

Every once in a while, American politics gifts us something so utterly baffling, so deliriously deranged, so magnificently unhinged that the only appropriate reaction is:

What on God’s Whole-Milk-Drinking Earth did we just watch?

This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the actual United States Secretary of Health and Human Services—dropped a shirtless “Rock Out Workout” montage with Kid Rock (yes, that Kid Rock), complete with milk-chugging, cold-plunge jeans, a hip-hop scratching soundtrack, and a middle finger straight to camera.

Yes, this is from the actual HHS ad; background added by me/AI.

It’s not satire. It’s not AI (allegedly). This is official health communication in the Year of our Lord 2026. The whole thing plays like a cross between a GNC commercial from 2003, a parody political ad someone made to mock MAGA, and a deepfake demo reel created by a drunk intern. The word bizarre has been working overtime. Whoever approved the ad is either a weapons-grade genius… or has lost every single grip they ever possessed. There really is no middle ground.

Having cut my writing teeth in the advertising world, I can’t help but imagine the pitch meeting that ultimately led to this cinematic masterpiece/trainwreck (depending on who you ask):

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: “So the concept is wellness, virility, and full-fat dairy.”
HHS: “I’m listening.”
CREATIVE DIRECTOR [flashing dramatic jazz hands]: “Hot tub milk chug. Denim ice bath. Sauna push-ups. Cut to Kid Rock giving the finger.”
HHS: “Which finger?
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: [demonstrates a Pinterest-worthy bird]
HHS: “And the message there is…?”
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: “Health—but make it aggressive.”
HHS: “I like it.”

I guess when you’re 72 with that body, you go shirtless a lot. (Not sure about the denim obsession TBH.)

The spot’s got a taxidermied bear and an American flag; charcuterie and a scene from Jaws; pickleball and a miniature Statue of Liberty. The only thing missing is a bald eagle bench-pressing a Bible. At one point, Kennedy dunks himself in an ice tub in his jeans—a hilarious double-down from a man who’s already taken heat for hiking in Levi’s (and has been half-jokingly accused of being a Never Nude).

The reaction to Kennedy’s post was decidedly mixed (with comments ranging from “This is what our health secretary should look like,” to “Nothing screams midlife crisis louder than this bromance photo op”), but the left-leaning media and its minions couldn’t even.

Esquire hands-down won the day with the least self-aware headline of all time:

Yes, Democrats, please show us what real class in the White House looks like again.

But here’s the thing: It worked. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone’s reposting it. Everyone’s squabbling over whether it’s parody, propaganda, performance art, or a cry for help. Welcome to Political PR in the TikTok Age, where the mantra is make it go viral. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t even have to be good. It can look like a Super Bowl commercial directed by a concussed raccoon. It can be as dark and disturbing as PETA’s Holocaust on Your Plate campaign where they compared factory farming to concentration camps. People can hate it. People can mock it. People can argue about exactly how many FCC regulations it violates. None of that matters. It just has to trend.

And what trends? Shirtless thirst traps. Dramatic wellness rituals. Weirdly earnest movie-inspired highlight reels. And sometimes, yes, middle fingers.

The Kennedy-Kid combo is inherently odd, even before you throw them together, naked from the waist up, into a sauna. But that’s why it works. It’s out there. It’s dripping with sweaty, unapologetic masculinity. It’s slightly scandalous. And as the saying sort-of goes, well-behaved men rarely make headlines. (Just ask Andrew Tate.)

So even when someone shares the clip with a string of puke emojis or just a single-word caption (“Cringe”); when Stephen Colbert turns it into a “senior softcore” bit; when you’ve got USA Today calling it “an erotic workout video,” I think it’s safe to say it’s doing its intended job: namely, hitting folks over the head with the eat-real-food-move-your-body MAHA message through sheer cultural osmosis. Eyeballs are the currency—and the click-counter is agnostic. Loved it? Click. Loathed it? Click. Shared it with your WhatsApp book club so you could skewer it as a group? Clickity-click-click—cue the tap dance outro and the NOW TRENDING tag on X.

I get the heckling, I really do. I mean, can you imagine if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had released a half-dressed jazzercize duet with Miley Cyrus to promote peace talks? Conservatives would have roasted her like a rack of lamb. Alas, thankfully, that was a different era; one where politicians didn’t moonlight as influencers or worry about collecting likes or pleasing the algorithm gods.

I admit that as official state messaging goes, this one is up there with Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway urging Fox viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” And I think we can all agree the promotional video would have been equally... compelling… without the middle-finger salute. If the afterlife includes internet access, the Founding Fathers are surely gasping in their graves. But one thing’s not up for debate: whole-milk hot-tub RFK and his six-pack just broke the internet.

Can’t wait to hear what y’all thought about the soon-to-be-infamous Rock Out Workout promo! :)

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