Senators: Don’t Be Colombia

January 30, 2025 by Mark Anderson

It’s amazing what getting sabotaged, impeached, investigated, indicted, and shot at can do for a president’s attitude. You just stop caring what people who stand in your way think. Especially when they try to block your most dear issues -- ones on which you made big promises to the American people. In the span of a couple holes of golf, Colombia’s socialist president went from refusing to take back its own citizens to grandstanding on social media to meekly offering his presidential plane to bring them home.

The lesson of Colombia is that the old way doing things is over. In the past, when a country said no, we would have seen a month of consternation and worry-filled, fretful meetings at the State Department only to emerge with the victorious solution of doing nothing. And mostly hoping people forgot about the whole thing after a month.

And U.S. senators should take Colombia to heart -- right now. Last week saw senators nearly derail Pete Hegseth’s nomination. If Columbia is an example of how serious Trump is about accomplishing his agenda, imagine if the Senate had succeeded in denying Hegseth.

While it’s always entertaining to watch senators making grand speeches to hold Republican presidential nominees to higher standards than they hold U.S. senators, the week ahead has even higher stakes than Hegseth. Hegseth was personally important to Trump. But for senators who are still in denial about the election, or are convinced voters’ memories only last a month, RFK Jr.’s nomination is far more critical to Trump for a simple reason: Robert Kennedy helped get Trump elected. Pete Hegseth did not.

This weekend’s Colombia lesson should be clear: Don’t mess with a man on a mission. While Trump is well known for his high value on loyalty, Trump is himself especially loyal to those around him. To a fault, as we saw in his first administration, when Trump trusted people he should not have. That will not happen this time around. This time Trump is putting people into place that he already trusts going in. Not like last time when he extended too much faith and too much trust to people who were recommended to him.

Given Colombia, the last thing senators should be considering is derailing a critical nomination like RFK who was and is such a big linchpin for Trump’s agenda. Trump knows how critical Make America Healthy Again was to those who voted for him -- especially with the youth vote and to bring over Democrats and independents.

But it’s not just getting RFK into office, it’s the impact Trump truly expects from RFK being there. As Colombia learned the hard way, Trump means what he says. He is not merely expecting results this time, he demands them... and God help those who say no. Trump wants RFK in that office because he wants and expects a healthier America as a result of him being there to deliver on a key promise to voters.

And that should put U.S. companies on notice as well. If your products are not making America healthy, if they are actually making Americans unhealthy, then expect the Colombia treatment. The same for agencies overseeing such companies. If they thought what Trump did to Colombia was harsh, he will not hesitate even one hole of golf to destroy that agency. He’ll take it apart before he even tees off.

One such enabler of making America unhealthy has been the food stamps program -- a mix of bad policies made worse by the intersection of spineless (or, worse, treacherous) bureaucrats who bow to lobbyists and their well-funded politicians. The Foundation for Government Accountability recently released a damning report on food stamps fueling the junk food epidemic. Among their key findings were “the food stamp program is failing to provide a more nutritious diet for enrollees” and that “food stamps are fueling the junk food epidemic with soda ranking as the number one commodity bought with food stamps.” They recommend states should immediately seek waivers to ban soda and candy from food stamps.

The mere threat of such moves will trigger lobbying groups to pressure senators. According to the FGA, “Big Soda” took in $6 billion from food stamps in 2016. Their lobbyists have so far stopped not only changes to the food stamps program, they have even shut down “efforts to study the impact of sugar-sweetened beverage restrictions… even at the pilot level.” We have seen Big Pharma and others (let’s just collectively call them “Big Sick”) already launch efforts to derail Kennedy. Big Sick doesn’t make money if people are healthy.

The most important takeaway from the FGA report is that the food stamps program and its interrelated agencies have an opportunity to help make the poor healthy, not just prevent hunger. According to that report, the food stamps program itself costs taxpayers a whopping $133 billion per year. Imagine the additional costs that a poor, sugary diet adds to the taxpayers because some seventy percent of food stamps recipients are also on Medicaid.

That’s exactly the kind of change Trump is after. Cheaper costs. Better results.

It’s an opportunity with far-reaching effects. Healthier people cost other agencies less. Fewer trips to doctors, fewer drugs to make up for poor nutrition, and better health leads to other, longer term and far-reaching benefits. People who are healthier feel better. People who feel better are, among other things, less depressed. They’re more productive. They do better in school, at their jobs, at home, and in life.

That’s not just common sense, it’s health sense. More sugar leads to dozens if not hundreds of other health problems, including and especially obesity and diabetes. In 2023, the NIH found the rate of diabetes in young people under the age of 20 showed an “alarming increase” over just the thirteen years from 2002 to 2015. And that was young people ten years ago. Our food supply has not improved. If anything, it’s gotten worse since 2015. While Trump is understandably angry that Europe won’t take our farm products, a major reason why is because Europe sees our farm products as unhealthy. It’s not solely an economics issue. If we want to sell to Europe, our food itself needs to be better. It’s not just Big Pharma. It’s Big Farm.

And while Trump enjoys the occasional Big Mac and the more-than-occasional Diet Coke, he will take seriously RFK’s advice and recommendations to reform America’s food supply away from heavily processed foods and junk food. In fact, I’m predicting that RFK Jr. will make Trump a special project to help him personally lead a healthier life and to cut back on things he should be eating less of. What better way to highlight results than a healthier president? It’s one thing to say you want Make America Healthy Again. A much better way is to lead by example. I’m certain RFK knows how powerful that message would be.

Even if my prediction is off, Trump knows he owes a lot of votes to bringing RFK on board. You can bet that Trump will not only demand that RFK’s reforms are put in place, but he will also take whatever actions are needed to ensure they become reality -- more than just words and promises.

Trump’s first week in office demonstrated that his second administration is not about forgiving and forgetting. Senators and bureaucrats, along with the companies and agencies that try to stand in Trump’s way, would do well to remember that.

Or make plans to move to Colombia.

Mark Anderson is the host of the I Spy Radio Show, airing on seven AM radio stations around deep blue Oregon -- the Wuhan Lab of leftist policies. He holds an MBA and is all but dissertation in his Doctor of Business Administration, which focuses on rebuilding trust once broken.