The sinister reason Trump revived the presidential fitness test

The sinister reason Trump revived the presidential fitness test
POTUS and the HHS secretary equate looks with how healthy you are

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published September 2, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) As an adult, I’m fairly athletic, working out nearly everyday. I’m not going to win any gold medals on my spin bike, but just getting to this point in my life has been a quiet triumph. But as a kid, I was branded terminally unfit, a label that took decades of internal work to overcome. Much of that trauma goes back to the infamous presidential fitness test. Like many childhood asthmatics, my condition peaked around 4th grade, about the time when kids also start developing the keen sense of cruelty that will define their junior high years. Despite my condition, I was put through the ritual humiliation all too many kids from the 1950s through the early aughts endured: Attempted feats of strength, like pull-ups or shuttle runs, all performed for an audience of mocking classmates who enjoyed my failures.

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Over the decades since the presidential fitness test was first implemented in the late 1950s, health experts increasingly criticized it for not only being ineffective, but also counterproductive. Turns out ritually humiliating kids does not lead to positive attitudes about exercise. Russell Pate, an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina, told the Washington Post it had the effect of “mostly making a lot of kids really want to skip gym class.” This is why President Barack Obama ended the program in 2012, instead replacing it with FitnessGram, which was focused on health and didn’t pit children against each other in gym class.

But because anything bullying-related turns him on, Donald Trump brought the presidential fitness test back over the summer. This isn’t just about his lifelong love of cruelty, though. It’s part of the larger MAGA project, led by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of using the amorphous concept of “wellness” as a justification for taking away people’s health care. Worse, it’s rooted in a deeply unscientific notion that the measure of how healthy you are is how you look on the outside — and no, children aren’t exempt from this hot-or-not evaluation of “health.”

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On the surface, these comments don’t seem like a big deal. Yes, walking is indeed good for you, even if it’s just on city sidewalks and not through the wilderness, as in Kennedy and Oz’s video. But the context makes their claims sinister. Not only are these two actively fighting to cut off health insurance coverage for millions, Kennedy is taking away preventive care for millions more. The high-profile firing of Dr. Susan Monarez, who directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rash of resignations at the agency last week were a direct response to Kennedy’s efforts to destroy vaccination programs, starting with his severe restrictions on the COVID-19 vaccine. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/09/02/the-sinister-reason-trump-revived-the-presidential-fitness-test/