Introduction
In his recent “Trumpapalooza” speech, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. peevishly said that Democrats had “abolished my uncle’s physical fitness test because they said that competition was bad for children.”
He was referring to a program called the Presidential Fitness Test that existed before John F. Kennedy took office. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an Executive Order creating the President’s Council on Youth Fitness with the goal of improving the physical fitness of America’s kids. This led to the establishment of the Youth Fitness Project by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation and in 1958, they published the first official Youth Fitness Test.
The Youth Fitness Test, which had an assortment of elements involving running, jumping, sit-ups, and other activities, has undergone a number of changes over the years. However, when Democratic administrations made any changes, Republicans quickly and invariably demonized the efforts.
Let’s take a look at how the program evolved and the Republican hypocrisy about efforts led by Democrats.
John F. Kennedy through Ronald Reagan
In December 1960, shortly before he took office, Kennedy published an article in Sports Illustrated titled, “The Soft American” in which he decried the waning physical fitness of American kids. “The harsh fact of the matter is that there is … an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies—whose physical fitness is not what it should be—who are getting soft,” Kennedy wrote. “And such softness on the part of individual citizens can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation.”
He changed the name of Eisenhower’s program to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, expanding its focus beyond children. He began a nationwide public service advertising campaign, promoting physical fitness across all age groups.
When Lyndon B. Johnson took office, he created the Presidential Physical Fitness Award Program, the first presidential program acknowledging young people who met minimum requirements on a series of fitness tests. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the test was modified, removing some components and adding others.
During this time, one of the chief criticisms of the program was that it excluded kids who were physically challenged. While the program was continued and expanded during the Carter and Reagan administrations, the focus remained on top performers.
The Clinton and Obama Years
When he took office, Bill Clinton changed the aim of the program to include all children, not just high performers. With programs like “Get Off It!” and “Get Up, Get Out!”, Clinton’s programs de-emphasized the award aspect of the program and promoted physical activity, in general.
When Barack Obama became president, he retired the award program entirely and, in 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama established “Let’s Move!”, which remained focused on physical activity and nutrition. The website featured resources for healthy eating, an active lifestyle, and physical fitness. “In the end, as First Lady, this isn’t just a policy issue for me,” Obama wrote. “This is a passion. This is my mission. I am determined to work with folks across this country to change the way a generation of kids thinks about food and nutrition.”
In an NPR Morning Edition segment titled, “Checking Up On Michelle Obama’s Anti-Obesity Effort”, Myra Gutin of Rider University pointed out how unique Michelle Obama’s effort was:
Gutin says Michelle Obama goes further than her predecessors: “She has partners from Major League Baseball to Wal-Mart, and no other first lady initiative that I can think of had that kind of support from the corporate world.”
She also engaged celebrities in her effort. For example, Beyoncé rewrote her song “Get Me Bodied” for a workout video aimed at kids, and renamed it “Move Your Body”:
Conservatives Lose Their Minds
The Obamas’ decision to retire the fitness award program stemmed, in part, from research showing many kids felt excluded from participating. One study detailed the “fatphobia” experienced by many kids. Some recalled that during physical education classes, they often felt “humiliated, vulnerable, or incompetent.”
That didn’t stop Republicans from attacking both the President and the First Lady. Here’s more from NPR:
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin have all attacked Michelle Obama’s program directly.
“Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over [and] make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife’s priorities — just leave us alone. Get off our back,” Palin has said.
During the Super Bowl telecast, viewers in Washington, D.C., saw an ad against a proposed soda tax that struck a similar tone — without mentioning Obama’s program specifically.
“Give me a break. I can decide what to buy without government help,” the woman in the ad says. “The government is just getting too involved in our personal lives.”
As Tom Bartlett wrote for The Atlantic, “Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity portrayed Let’s Move as a nanny-state plot to control the American diet, a slippery slope to the criminalization of french fries.”
The Los Angeles Times has more:
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh last week suggested Obama is a hypocrite for dining on ribs, and remarked on her waistline in the process. That was just the latest offering in what has been a steady diet of criticisms.
“Leaders are supposed to be leaders,” Limbaugh said. “If we are supposed to eat roots, berries and tree bark, show us how.”
Critics have carped about Obama’s spread at her Super Bowl party — and have suggested that the child-nutrition legislation she backed in Congress would bring about the end of school bake sales. Her work with the National Restaurant Assn. to develop healthier menu items has been decried in some circles as a government takeover of business.
Trump and RFK Jr. Take Us Back
All of which brings us to today. In his ongoing effort to take America back in time, Trump has joined the “🤬 Your [Kids’] Feelings” crowd. In 2025 he issued an Executive Order reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test, saying, “These next few years will be a golden age of athletics.”
Trans athletes need not apply.
During the signing ceremony for his Executive Order, Trump took the opportunity to slam the Obamas. “We had the Obama administration which phased out this wonderful tradition of physical fitness. Thank you, Barack, very much. Great job,” he said sarcastically. “But we’re bringing it back. We’re bringing it back.”
This is despite his stated belief that exercise drains the body’s “finite” energy resources and his claim that he exercises “like about one minute a day, max, if I’m lucky.”
The Hypocrisy Zone
Trump’s petulant effort to undo the accomplishments of Michelle and Barack Obama is just part of the hypocrisy of his administration and his sycophantic supporters. People who once decried the Obamas’ work to reduce sugary drinks and snacks in the diets of our nation’s kids as “the nanny state” telling us what to do are silent as RFK Jr. works to do the same thing. His “Eat Real Food” initiative is largely just a rebranding of previous efforts. At a MAHA event last year, he said, “I urge every governor to champion legislation that bans ultra-processed foods and dyes in public schools, and submit a waiver to the USDA to remove soda from SNAP.”
It all sounds vaguely familiar…
It’s very hard to see how Kennedy’s MAHA efforts are any different than the so-called nanny state directives Republicans derided not long ago. His rhetoric on this issue sounds so much like the things Michelle Obama said in promoting her “Let’s Move!” program that it verges on plagiarism.
In the end, encouraging healthy eating and an active lifestyle, especially for kids, is something we can all get behind. But let’s not pretend that this was an idea only Trump or Kennedy could conceive of. In fact, as a concept, a presidential focus on kids’ health and fitness predates even Kennedy’s famous uncle.
Great piece. The persons who continue to politicize health, healthcare and public health are violent. It has gone on since 1980 and it is causing immeasurable harm and death.
RFK jr has dismantled the FDA food inspection system which had assured the safety of our food production and distribution system and has now produced a system rife with contaminated, infected and unsafe Fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, jalapeños, breads, cereals, meat, dairy products, poultry and pork. We now have the least healthy food system in the developed economy world!