Vice President JD Vance credited Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unique diet tips with helping him lose 30 pounds in recent months.
“I called Bobby Kennedy, and I said, ‘I know you’re really into health, and I’m thinking of giving up sugar. What do you think?’” Vance, 42, told the White House press corps on Thursday, September 3. “Bobby Kennedy said, ‘No, no, no. I’ve got something that’s way better than that and way more intense.’”
The Health and Human Services secretary, 72, encouraged Vance to adopt a high-protein and sauerkraut-heavy diet in order to trim down.
“My advice to you is if you want to lose weight, call Bobby Kennedy,” he quipped. “And if you want to enjoy what you eat, do not call Bobby Kennedy.”
The vice president was asked about his recent weight loss by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy during a White House press briefing on Thursday. He revealed that his recent focus on health started by observing the Christian season of prayer known as Lent before Easter.
“I try to take [Lent] very seriously,” he noted. “I try to do some kind of self-denial. I was talking to my wife [Usha Vance] on Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and I [told her], ‘I’m going to give up sugar, and I think I’m going to give up social media.’”
With a war in Iran escalating this week and economic woes at home, Vance admitted how bizarre it was to spend time discussing his weight loss at a White House press briefing.
“When you’re the vice president of the United States and one of the first questions during a press conference at the White House is [about] how much weight you lost, you must have gotten very fat. That’s one thing that I take from that question,” he told Doocy, 39.
President Donald Trump raised eyebrows with his own comments on weight loss this week. During his remarks at a White House Rose Garden dinner, Trump, 80, was addressing the cost of weight loss medications — which he called “fat drugs” — when he started discussing his unnamed friend’s lack of success with GLP-1s.
“A friend of mine — very, very heavy. He’s a very obese person. I said, ‘You’re an extremely obese person.’ But he’s a brilliant guy. He’s a Wall Street guy. He’s a brutal man, but he’s smart as hell. But he’s got a serious weight problem,” Trump told his guests. “And he called me up. He’s from New York, and he’s one of the top guys on Wall Street. He’s begging me — because I told the story a couple of times — not to mention his name because I’ll destroy his reputation.”
The president continued with his unflattering assessment of his pal, saying, “He’s tough as hell, and he’s smart, vicious, wild. These are the people we have to deal with when you’re president. He used to call me ‘Donnie,’ now he calls me ‘president.’ … But he said, ‘You know, Mr. President, I was in London and I paid $86 for Ozempic. And in New York, I pay $1,300 for the same thing. That’s a lot, that’s a big difference.’”
Trump later claimed that he asked his friend directly whether he was actually taking “the fat drugs” before telling him, “It’s not working. You look like s***t.”
The joke received a muted reaction from the guests in attendance at the White House dinner.
In November 2025, Trump announced a deal with pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that is intended to lower the cost of GLP-1 medications through his TrumpRx program. Drug-pricing experts have since suggested that the reasons behind subsequent price drops are more complicated than simply attributing them to TrumpRx.
