Distrustful of Health Agencies, These Voters Cheer Trump’s Picks to Run Them

Some voters galvanized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” said they believed the health establishment was dismissive and even corrupt.

As a nature-loving physical therapist in Boulder, Colo., Colin O’Banion shops at farmers markets, grows organic squash in his backyard and thought he could never vote for Donald J. Trump.

But during the pandemic, he said, he and his wife became social outcasts when they refused Covid-19 vaccines for themselves and their three sons. Tuning in to alternative health podcasts, he became convinced that the country’s public health establishment was corrupt, and that the only antidote was the upheaval being promised by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he teamed up with Mr. Trump.

“That’s what brought me on board,” Mr. O’Banion, 49, said, still sounding surprised that he had voted for Mr. Trump, now the president-elect. “We have a real epidemic going on with metabolic disease, diabetes, obesity. How is it possible we have so much money and the most unhealthy people?”

Scientists and public health experts have expressed alarm that Mr. Trump wants to give over the country’s health agencies to people like Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who have spread misinformation about vaccines and Covid treatments and vowed to gut the government agencies that regulate food and medicines.

But to people like Mr. O’Banion, rejecting norms is exactly the point.

Trust in scientists and medical experts has eroded since the pandemic, and voters galvanized by Mr. Kennedy’s pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” as head of the Department of Health and Human Services said that he had given voice to their frustrations with the whole system — from vaccines and Covid rules to hospitals and health insurance.