President Donald Trump’s latest action is sure to materially improve the lives of so many Americans: He’s reviving the Presidential Fitness Test.
If you are of A Certain Age, you probably just flinched. The Presidential Fitness Test, established during the Eisenhower administration in the late 1950s, tortured the nonathletic schoolchildren of America until the 2013-14 school year, when the Obama administration replaced it with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, which focused on children’s health, not their capacity to do more sit-ups in 1 minute than their peers.
But that’s not the kind of health the Trump administration is interested in. That kind of health is for wusses. According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, this will create “a culture of strength and excellence for years to come.”
Trump is also reestablishing the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, which will be led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Oh god, you just know that Kennedy is going to take his shirt off and do push-ups. Or he might do pull-ups while wearing jeans. The possibilities are endless. Maybe Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shows up and they can have a bro-off?
The scheduled guests at the signing ceremony for this are a real grab-bag of winners. There’s Swedish golfer Annika Sörenstam, who thought it was a great idea to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, also known as the day after the Capitol insurrection. There’s Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, who gave a commencement speech in 2024 where he railed against Catholic leaders for being insufficiently conservative and “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” He went on to complain about Pride Month and abortion. So, basically perfect for the Trump era.
Also present for the festivities: registered sex offender Lawrence Taylor, a retired NFL player who pleaded guilty in 2011 to misdemeanor charges of patronizing an underage sex worker and sexual misconduct. Then there’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon, still a defendant in a lawsuit accusing her of ignoring child sex abuse while she was an executive at World Wrestling Entertainment. This does not seem like the greatest move for a president desperately hoping to shift people’s attention away from his friendship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The resurrection of the Presidential Fitness Test is in keeping with the other “health” things promoted by Trump and Kennedy, many of which just seem to be the personal fixations of one or the other. So we’ve got Kennedy pressuring companies to change their food dyes and getting Steak ’n Shake to cook its French fries in rendered beef fat because it is, in his words, a more “traditional” ingredient. Sure, tallow clogs arteries and causes high cholesterol, but an increased risk of heart disease is a small price to pay for the crispy fries Kennedy said people are “raving” about. And who can forget one of Trump’s greatest second-term wins thus far: getting Coca-Cola to agree to use cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup. Truly a game-changer, sir.
Meanwhile, the administration has overseen a wholesale destruction of health research and public health efforts. It’s throwing out rules that would have lowered the amount of “forever chemicals” in drinking water. It has ignored a preventable measles outbreak. And it has been firing the people who review and approve new drugs. These actions compromise the public health of all Americans, but at least schoolchildren will have the privilege of trying to do a pull-up while everyone else watches.
So much winning, so much health.