NYT’s fact-check of RFK Jr.’s claims about popular breakfast cereal stuns social media

In a mash of hilarity and hysteria, the New York Times’ “fact-check” on a cabinet nominee’s take on Froot Loops read like something “straight out of Orwell.”

Striving for new heights in propaganda, (or lows — depending on your perspective), the demonization of President-elect Donald Trump has pivoted to rather disingenuous coverage of his staffing selections. Amid sharing select details about Pete Hegseth and maligning former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R), the Times’ take on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lament over chemicals in American food topped many a list of credibility killers.

After Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services had compared the makeup of Froot Loops for American consumers to the Canadian version of the product, calling out “18 or 19 ingredients” compared to “two or three,” the Gray Lady’s attempt to diminish the argument appeared as more of a reinforcement.

“Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops as an example of a product with too many artificial ingredients, questioning why the Canadian version has fewer than the U.S. version. But he was wrong,” stated the Times before detailing the contrast, “The ingredient list is roughly the same, although Canada’s has natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used ‘for freshness,’ according to the ingredient label.”

“Spitting out my coffee after reading this NYT ‘fact check’ of RFK Jr.,” reacted X user Brad Cohn in a post viewed nearly 11 million times as others found their own humor.

The criticism of Kennedy had been prompted by an MSNBC interview where the environmental attorney and Make America Healthy Again advocate said, “In some categories, their entire departments, like the nutrition department in the FDA, they have to go. They’re not doing their job. They’re not protecting our kids. Why do we have Froot Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients, and you go to Canada, and it’s got two or three?”

Since his nomination to secretary of HHS, a concerted effort has been renewed to paint the onetime White House hopeful as some form of crazy or even a threat to the public, namely because of his concern over the safety of various vaccines and the fact that their manufacturers were shielded from liability were the products to harm consumers.

Worth noting, after Trump announced the nomination, the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax, each involved in the manufacture of vaccines, suffered a drop in stock prices.

Among the reactions that flitted between mockery of the Times and contempt for the state of modern corporate media, one X user who described herself as politically homeless asserted, “This is straight out of Orwell. These propagandists say he was wrong, but then state facts demonstrating he was right. You couldn’t satirize this, because it’s already too ridiculous.”

Kevin Haggerty

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