Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at CNN anchor Erin Burnett, claiming she is afflicted with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that has left her without “common sense” or “basic arithmetic.” RFK Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, was complaining about a report on “Erin Burnett OutFront” that found one of his “affordable” meal plans was far pricier than he asserted.
CNN’s Aug. 19 report about RFK Jr.’s recipe claims, by correspondent Tom Foreman, did not explicitly refer to Donald Trump.
In his report, Foreman checked out what it would cost to buy the ingredients for a meal described on RFK Jr.’s “The Real Food Show” cooking show on YouTube. While the health secretary claimed the dinner for a family of four — wild Alaskan salmon cakes with a white-bean salad — came in at just $19.64, Foreman tallied the price of the necessary groceries at a local chain store at more than three times that: $70.54.
In a post Thursday evening on X, RFK Jr. railed against CNN and Burnett over the piece.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome has so debilitated @ErinBurnett that she has abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic,” the health secretary wrote, referring to a term Trump routinely uses to describe people who criticize the president.
RFK Jr. continued, “CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe. If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?”
According to RJK Jr., “‘The Real Food Show’ uses standard recipe costing: we count what the recipe actually uses. The rest stays in your kitchen for the next meal — and the meals after that.” He concluded his post with this: “Our goal is simple: help Americans reclaim their kitchens, cook healthy food without breaking the bank, and stock their pantries with high-quality ingredients they can use again and again. That’s how we Make America Healthy Again.”
Variety has reached out to CNN for comment.
RFK Jr.’s tweet quoted a post by “OutFront” with a clip from Foreman’s report, which said, “CNN remakes one of the ‘affordable’ meals from RFK Jr.’s new cooking show. It should cost under $5 per serving, but what’s the real price point? @tomforemancnn reports.”
In his report, Foreman noted, “HHS insists this is standard recipe-costing methodology, and they want to help Americans stock up on high-quality ingredients they can use across many meals.”
The source of the discrepancy, as Foreman explained in the three-minute segment, is that RFK Jr.’s total grocery bill prorated certain ingredients for only the amounts used in the recipe. For example, “The Real Food Show” tabulated the cost of just one egg at 25 cents — whereas you typically cannot buy just a single egg from a grocery store (Foreman paid $2.79 for a dozen). And while RFK Jr.’s accounting for the avocado mayonnaise put the cost at 40 cents because they were only using a couple of tablespoons for the recipe, Foreman found that purchasing a whole bottle cost $11.19.
“They’re only pricing parts of it, and grocery stores don’t sell things that way,” Foreman said.
After preparing and trying the dish, Foreman said, “It’s certainly tasty and it appears healthy.” However, he said, “I do not see, having made this, how you can walk into a grocery store with $20 and come out with what you need to make four plates of this for a family.”