Outside the Beltway

In Front of Our Noses: This is Just Weird

Really, more under RFK's nose.

Steven L. Taylor · Monday, February 23, 2026 · 2 comments

So, these are just two news bits joined together by the presence of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Neither is, in the grand miasma of Trumpworld, especially important. But they both underscore how truly weird this administration and this present moment are.

First, let’s just go plain strange. Here we have a shirtless, bejeaned RFK, Jr., and a shirtless Kid Rock working out in a video posted by the federal government of these here United States. It is set to Kid Rock’s song, “Bawitdaba“

Just for kicks, KR flips off the camera.

While I am personally not scandalized by this, it is an extremely odd thing to have in a video ostensibly created as a PSA to promote exercise.

And here is a verse from the song, which was also part of the TPUSA’s alternative halftime show because Bad Bunny was too offensive, or something. (Side note: there is no way that most of the people who were incensed about Bad Bunny singing in Spanish could understand this song, especially since much of it is gibberish, i.e., “Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy”).

And this is for the questions that don’t have any answers
The midnight glancers and the topless dancers
The gander freaks, cars packed with speakers
The G’s with the 40’s and the chicks with beepers
The Northern Lights and the Southern Comfort
And it don’t even matter if their veins are punctured
All the crackheads, the critics, the cynics
And all my heroes in the Methadone clinics
All you bastards at the IRS
For the crooked cops and the cluttered desks
For the shots of Jack and the caps of Meth
Half pints of love and the 5th’s of stress
For the hookers all trickin’ out in Hollywood

And for my hoods of the world misunderstood
I said, “It’s all good, and it’s all in fun
Now get in the pit and try to love someone”

This isn’t exactly the stuff of blue-haired old ladies at Sunday School. But to the point of my previous post, the thing that makes Kid Rock appealing is the color of his skin more than anything else. It isn’t his wholesome demeanor or his high-minded, chaste lyrics.

And setting all that aside, what is the deal with RFK, Jr. working out in jeans? That’s just plain weird.

Second, there’s the statement Kennedy made on a podcast about snorting cocaine off a toilet seat. It was the kind of thing that makes you think you are reading The Onion, but it ends up you’re not.

It isn’t like we didn’t know that Kennedy had substance abuse problems in his past, but there is something so profoundly bizarre to have this kind of statement just tossed out in public. Moreover, the part that really struck me was that he was describing his attitude towards COVID-19: that since he had survived his toilet-seat snorts, he wasn’t afraid of any germ. This is a, well, unhealthy, attitude for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to have had during the recent pandemic, and is yet another red flag waving under our noses about his judgment.

Moreover, Steve Benen at MS Now makes a solid point:

There aren’t many countries where the nation’s health secretary could make such a comment in public and expect to remain in their position. But in 2026, conditions in the United States are rather odd.

In fact, watching Kennedy’s on-air comments, I found myself thinking about one person: Douglas Ginsburg.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan announced that Ginsburg — at the time a federal appeals court judge — was his choice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Two weeks later, Ginsburg felt compelled to withdraw his nomination, not because of concerns related to his qualifications or temperament, but because he had admitted to having smoked marijuana in the past.

Though it seems foolish now, at the time this was a deal-breaker. Almost four decades later, in a different Republican administration, a health secretary saying that he “used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats” barely generated news coverage.

This continues to be a bizarre and disconcerting timeline.