Kyrsten Sinema kisses up to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: ‘MAHA is amazing’

You don’t hear much out of former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema these days.

As the second Trump administration has torn families apart in its zeal to deport as many non-white people as possible, as Trump has worked to erase transgender people from existence, as Trump literally called for the execution of Mark Kelly, her erstwhile colleague in the Senate — through all of it, Sinema has kept her mouth zipped. The few times we do hear from her, she’s either defending the filibuster, bullying the city of Chandler over a data center or touting the benefits of the psychedelic drug ibogaine.

It’s on the latter subject that Sinema has again popped up in the news, speaking to Politico at a conference last month. And setting aside the relative benefits of ibogaine, which is derived from an African shrub, Sinema is doing so in a way that underscores why many voters in Arizona turned on her. In the interview, Sinema can’t stop herself from tongue-bathing the Trump administration and especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine denier behind the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s interesting, because I’ve seen some of my former colleagues really push back hard against his MAHA movement. MAHA is amazing,” Sinema told Politico, later saying she has a “close” relationship with RFK Jr.

“Do we want food with fewer chemicals in it? Yeah. Do we want to know where our food came from? Yeah. Do we want to get rid of toxic dyes in our food? Yeah,” Sinema continued. “How is this controversial?”

Hmm, is something missing there? Maybe something central to RFK Jr.’s entire identity? Could it be the man’s systematic effort to undermine confidence in vaccines, one of the great medical marvels of the last 100 years? Maybe we should forgive Sinema this oversight. After all, it’s not as if Arizona is home to the second-biggest outbreak of measles in the country.

In the interview, Sinema was similarly mealy-mouthed when it comes to all other things Trump. “Is there an opportunity to get this done in this administration? Heck, yeah,” she said. “Robert Kennedy is a disruptor and he supports psychedelic medicine. The possibility is ripe in this administration and we should strike while the iron is hot.” As far as ibogaine research goes, that may be true — Arizona’s preeminent psychedelic researcher agrees — but Sinema can’t help but handwave away anything else Trump might be doing.

“There are lots of feelings” across the country about Trump’s clownshow cabinet, she says, though she prefers the term “disruptors.” “Whether you’re delighted with this administration or whether you’re horrified by this administration, I’m going to leave all of that to the side, and just say, ‘Here’s an opportunity. You leave it or you take it. Let’s go.'” Not once does she name what any of those horrifying things might be.

Could it be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth picking off Trinidadians in tiny boats like he’s playing Duck Hunt? Perhaps it Trump’s explicitly anti-Constitutional decision to deploy National Guard troops to Democratic cities? What about Trump’s and Republicans’ eagerness to withhold food aid from needy families? Is Sinema horrified by any of that? We’ll never know, but we can guess!

This is not to begrudge Sinema’s mission to promote the study of ibogaine. It might really help people, which is why Arizona allocated $5 million for research into the drug. Sinema appears to care about this issue sincerely, having tried the drug herself to stave off a family history of dementia.

“It’s not a fun medicine,” she told Politico. “My experience was 15 hours long. That’s a long time. There was a noise in my head for the entire 15 hours that sounded like a little machine clunking around. Clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk.”

But after the treatment, she said, her memory is sharp and “my brain feels snappy.” That’s great for her, though it reveals something about her priorities.

It’s not that she’s forgetting to mention all the harm Trump and RFK Jr. are doing. It hasn’t slipped her mind that Trump has brought back racial profiling or that he yucks it up with journalist-murdering dictators. She hasn’t memory-holed the fact that while RFJ Jr. is so determined to make Skittles au naturale, he is simultaneously making it harder for people to access actual medicine. Sinema knows all of that is happening. She could use her platform to advocate against those things just as loudly as she advocates for ibogaine.

She just doesn’t care.