Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s lined face contorted into a gnarled grimace as he hauled his shaking body up towards the metal bar for one last pull-up.
That was one of the strangest moments in a generally pretty strange press conference, held at taxpayer expense at Washington D.C.’s Reagan International Airport by the Trump administration on Monday.
In the space of 36 minutes that no one watching will ever get back, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy offered no new solutions to the ongoing air traffic controller shortage, no plan to reduce the high cost of airport food, and no update on a Biden-era proposal to ban airlines from charging families extra fees just to sit together.
But he did announce $1 billion in new grant money for airports with ideas on how to make air travel healthier and more pleasant, before ushering in a parade of friendly influencers and entrepreneurs to talk about their personal hobbyhorses.
âWhat if we could create small spaces for Americans in airports to get mini workouts? Maybe some treadmills for people who want to walk near their gate… maybe some exercise bikes?â asked pseudoscience advocate and supplement-hawker Paul Saladino.
Conservative podcaster Isabel Brown decried the dirty, run-down state of America’s airport breastfeeding spaces and suggested that better facilities could âencourage young women to embrace the beauty of motherhoodâ and raise birth rates.
Kennedy, Trumpâs Health and Human Services Secretary, waxed lyrical about the nutritional qualities of âa mother’s breastâ and inveighed against unhealthy airport food, then handily beat Duffy in a pull-up contest in front of reporters.
âFourteen, fifteen â whoah man, he’s coming for you!â exclaimed an onlooker as the 71-year-old rapidly executed pull-ups in his work shirt and famous skinny tie, finally stopping at 20.
âHealth and Human Services! This is what they do. They just do pull ups all day,â said Duffy, who only managed 10.
Duffy, a former reality TV star and Fox presenter appointed by Trump in January, has had a difficult year as U.S. airports have repeatedly suffered delays, labor shortages, and other crises â especially during the government shutdown.
Last month he launched a new “civility campaign” to ârestore courtesy and class to air travelâ, asking air passengers to help each other out more, act out less, and “dress a little better” â prompting some flyers to show off their pajamas in protest.
In Monday’s press conference, Duffy said the grants were “pretty wide open” for airports to pitch ideas. “It might be, ‘I want to expand the play areas for kids’. ‘I want additional nursing pods for nursing mothers’,” he said.
âMaybe I want a workout area where people might get some blood flow doing some pull-ups or some step-ups in the airport. It could be any range of things.â
Saladino, a physician and raw milk believer who promotes the “carnivore diet” and reportedly claims plants are toxic to humans, was visibly excited by the possibility of installing “mini-gyms” in airports.
“These would be a massive step in the right direction, and it’s such a huge thing that we could do for Americans,” he said. “Anyone I’ve talked to about the idea has just been â they smile, they get excited.”
When a journalist asked if Duffy et al were worried about travelers becoming smelly, Saladino jumped in to say even a 3-5 minute workout would have health benefits.
Brown, a host for the pro-Trump Daily Wire and the only woman at the press conference, opened her segment with an apparent dig at transgender men, laughing: “In all my years of science education, I don’t think we have yet figured out a way for men to breastfeed.”
She went on: “It can be incredibly disheartening to see the rolled eyes and visible annoyance when we sit down with our babies on an airplane seat, but that pales in comparison to the jarring lack of support that many airports across the country provide for breastfeeding moms.
âThe law does technically require every airport terminal to have a nursing room… [but] I’ve often found that there’s no sink provided, the lights don’t turn on, the door doesn’t lock.â She concluded by saying that the U.S. must âembrace the sacred responsibility to help moms feed our babies.â
Luke Saunders, the CEO of health food chain Farmer’s Fridge, spoke only briefly, describing his business and calling for more healthy options in airports. But that was a topic on which Kennedy had plenty to say.
âThis is where healthy diets go to die,â he said. âThe food that’s available in the airport, a lot of it tastes very good, but it’s not very good for you. It’s deep fried food, it’s sugar bombs, it’s ultra processed foods, and all of them are going to leave you sicker than before you ate them.
âAll of the ingenuity of corporate America… has not produced an infant formula that is superior in nutrition and all the qualities that we want to the infant formula that God made, which is the infant formula in a mother’s breast. We at HHS are encouraging mothers to breastfeed as long as possible,â Kennedy said.
Asked whether he would do anything about the high cost of airport food, Duffy said: âIt’s interesting. It’s market demand and supply… so I don’t have a plan to reduce costs. What I am trying to do is provide healthier options for people.â
Some MAGA media figures ate up the spectacle. âLMAO, EPIC! This is the embodiment of MAHA right here. It doesn’t get any better than this,â wrote right-wing Florida journalist Eric Daugherty on X.
But gun control activist Shannon Watts was less impressed, writing: âIâm going to do pull-ups while wearing my Sunday finest? JUST HIRE SOME F***ING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS.â
