Robert F Kennedy Jr’s old running mate Nicole Shanahan is in the middle of a transformation into a MAGA health influencer.
Shanahan was a Democrat until earlier this year. She then became the running mate of RFK Jr as an independent, but now has appeared alongside Tucker Carlson during a recent event outside Houston. Other guests during Carlson’s live tour have included Alex Jones, Donald Trump Jr, and Charlie Kirk.
The attorney and tech entrepreneur used to be in the elite circles of Silicon Valley, who is now using her sizable divorce settlement from Google co-founder Sergey Brin to become an influencer and what she calls a “warrior mom” as she calls on women to support her outlandish medical opinions, as well as backing former President Donald Trump, according to The Washington Post.
In August, Kennedy ended his campaign and announced his backing of Trump. Since then, the 39-year-old Shanahan has tried to become a health influencer with the Trump-inspired slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”
She has distanced herself from her old tech friends, claiming that they want to use technology to overcome hurdles such as aging and other limitations of life. She has indicated that she believes that vaccines led to her daughter’s autism, saying that it was a notion she was “not allowed to consider” while in Silicon Valley. She has also indicated that she may be interested in running for California governor.
She has noted that all of her political views don’t necessarily “overlap” with Trump’s, but she has still pushed his candidacy during appearances on Fox News, podcasts, and on her social media accounts.
Shanahan has said that Trump is a “former enemy” who became a “partner in a time of need.”
“Sergey gave her money so that she wasn’t going to do harmful things to him,” one person told The Post. “So now she’s doing harmful things to the country.”
Shanahan has suggested that her support for Trump stems from her disappointment in the medical field and the Democrats. She has accused the Democrats of trying to end the Kennedy campaign and described them as being controlled by elitist groupthink.
She has pushed her Make America Healthy Again ideas to a group of left-leaning and independent women who lost their belief in science during the pandemic, the Post noted. Shanahan has said that her convictions began to change during the pandemic when she grew to question if “environmental toxins” had injured her young daughter.
The billionaire has said that the experience of having her daughter diagnosed with autism at 18 months led her to take on fringe health ideas and right-wing politics.
“I swear to God, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl,” she told Carlson. She claimed that her daughter became “a different kid” some months after vaccination.
“The loneliness, plus Covid ... led me to a place of utter destruction,” she added. “Coming out of that completely alone with a child that you feel helpless to help is a position that either leads you to total hermitage — or makes you a warrior mom.”
Appearing on Roseanne Barr’s program on September 27, Shanahan said: “The individuals that I will be speaking to over the next several weeks in the lead up to the election are the moms who have [a] distaste for Donald Trump because they see him as a misogynist.”
But she claimed that Trump “respects the family” and that he “respects a mom being a mom.”
The Post reported that Shanahan texted an associate in June who had been contacted by the paper earlier as Shanahan wanted to propose a deal. She claimed that she would “pay your friend,” a reporter for The Post, “half a million dollars to be a whistleblower” to report on people she argued had been sharing false information about her. This was sent to a Post reporter, who didn’t reply.
After receiving a list of questions from the paper, Shanahan said she rejected parts of The Post’s reporting but didn’t give specific answers to the questions.
“I’m so sorry you feel it is appropriate to do this for political motivations,” she told the paper. “It’s a very sad state our country is in.”
A Brin spokesperson told The Post, “Unfortunately, this and other reports include inaccuracies about Sergey and his family.”
