In 2024, nihilism—and its adherents—played a key role in reelecting Donald Trump President of the United States.   

During the 2024 Presidential campaign Trump promised to appoint Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

On October 27, 2024, Trump told a rally in Madison Square Garden: “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is a self-admitted former 14-year heroin addict, which he has said began at age 15. In a 2012 deposition he claimed that doctors found a dead parasitic worm in his brain, which he believed caused significant memory loss and brain fog around 2010.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Since 2005, Kennedy has peddled vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. Among these:

• Vaccines cause autism.
• The COVID-19 vaccine—which has saved countless lives—is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” 
• There is no comprehensive system for monitoring vaccine safety.

Since Kennedy took office on February 13, 2025:

• February 14, 2025: Around 1,300 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were laid off by the administration, including all first-year officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. 
• August: Over 600 CDC employees were laid off. Among programs completely dismantled: Maternal and child health services, oral health, and the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys.
• By July 7, 2025, 1,281 measles cases had been reported, more than the 1,274 measles cases reported in all of 2019. This was the highest level of cases since the disease had been declared eliminated in 2000.
• Roughly 93% of infections in 2025 and 95% so far in January, 2026, were among unvaccinated people or those with an unknown vaccination status. And this can be directly traced to the influence of anti-vaccine conspiracy-spreaders like Kennedy.   

Measles virus

Since becoming President again on January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump has aggressively committed a series of outrages against his fellow Americans, including: 

• Granting clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack.
• Signing 26 executive orders reversing climate change initiatives, eliminating DEI programs, changing the federal designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and initiating a federal hiring freeze.
• Revoking an executive order on Artificial Intelligence safety signed by former President Joseph Biden, to establish safeguards for the rapidly advancing AI technology.
• Firing the inspectors general—who are charged with protecting the government from waste and corruption—from more than a dozen federal agencies.
• Purging about a half-dozen executive assistant directors at the FBI. These were some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations. Their “crime”: Investigating Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 coup attempt and illegally holding highly sensitive national security documents after leaving office.
• Following Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, the Department of Defense deleted content that included the achievements of nonwhites—such as Navajo code talkers, black Tuskegee Airmen, Medal of Honor winners and women veterans.
• Firing the board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointing himself as chairman—just as Joseph Stalin made himself arbiter of what was permissible for artists in the Soviet Union.
• Ordering the Justice Department to indict his critics such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
• James had convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Comey had sought to investigate Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential campaign to ensure Trump’s election.
• Shutting down the Federal Government on October 1, when Democrats refused to agree to his gutting Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), causing 10-15 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage. 
• Among those not getting paid: Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Owing to many controllers refusing to work, the FAA reduced air traffic by 10% at many airports.
• Shutting off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the poor to pressure Democrats to support his gutting of healthcare programs.
• Flooding the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago with federalized National Guard troops against state governors’ wishes during immigration crackdowns and civil unrest.
• Flooding Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, with 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who are terrorizing (and in one case murdering) both American citizens and illegal aliens. 
• Governors have requested the deployment of federal troops—such as in Arkansas in 1957 for school desegregation and in California in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. But Trump is the first President to deploy troops against the wishes of states’ governors.
• Pardoning favored political allies and loyalists. Among these: Seventy-seven people associated with the Trump fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff  Mark Meadows.
• Others included: Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years’ imprisonment for moving tons of cocaine to the United States.
• Threatening to invade Greenland, a self-governing, autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The United States has recognized Denmark’s ties to Greenland since 1917 and signed a joint defense agreement in 1951.
• As Denmark is a member of NATO, an attack on Greenland would ignite a war between the United States and its NATO allies.