Watch: Whoopi Goldberg rails against RFK Jr for ‘fat shaming’
The View/Hot Topics
Whoopi Goldberg has accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of “fat-shaming” Americans, claiming that “sometimes people are born genetically larger”.
The actress said Mr Kennedy, whom Donald Trump has nominated as his health secretary, was “setting folks up for shame” by trying to get people to eat healthier.
Mr Kennedy has declared he wants to “Make America Healthy Again” by cracking down on ultra-processed foods, but has criticised efforts to make weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro more widely available.
Goldberg, a panellist on ABC’s “The View”, said on Thursday: “This isn’t just about food, this is sometimes people are born genetically larger.”
She appeared to forget Mr Kennedy’s name, before being reminded by the others on the programme, and addressed him directly.
“You’re setting folks up for shame… Maybe you don’t know you’re doing it, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
“I’m going to say you don’t know, you don’t realise what you do to people when you say stuff like that because it doesn’t work for everybody.”
Goldberg said she had weighed close to 300 pounds just two years ago and was only able to shift her excess weight by injecting herself with Mounjaro, a weight-loss drug.
“You cannot take it [weight-loss drugs] out of people’s hands. If it can help because if we can keep people healthy if we can get rid of diabetes,” she said.
“What’s wrong with trying to do that? You’re wrong on this.”
Mr Kennedy has previously criticised Ozempic, a diabetes drug prescribed off label for weight loss, as failing to tackle the causes of soaring obesity rates among Americans.
$3 trillion bill
“We’re spending $1,600 a month on this drug, there’s a bill right now before Congress that will make it available to everybody who is overweight, which is 74 percent of the American population,” he told Fox News in October.
“That alone will cost $3 trillion a year.
“If we spend about one fifth of that giving good food, three meals a day to every man, woman, and child in our country we can solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight for a tiny fraction of the cost.”
In a sign of future disagreements with the Trump administration, Elon Musk, a close ally of the president-elect, said on Wednesday that “nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans” than weight-loss drugs.
“Elon’s right on this,” Goldberg said on The View after hitting out at Mr Kennedy.
Mr Kennedy has promised to take on fast food giants and ultra-processed foods that he claims are “mass poisoning us and killing us and making us the sickest population in the world”.
In a podcast appearance in November, he said Mr Trump’s diet, in which McDonald’s and KFC features heavily, was “just poison”.
