Erika Kirk Quietly Arranged a White House Summit Between Trump and Disgruntled Influencers: Report
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump faces a multi-pronged rebellion inside his winning 2024 coalition.
According to Politico, the president, without fanfare, has already received help in trying to pacify some of those rebels.
Turning Point USA CEO and chair Erika Kirk, widow of slain TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk, quietly helped arrange what Politico called a “listening session” that allowed prominent Make America Healthy Again influencers to voice their frustrations directly to Trump, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others in the administration.
The summit occurred earlier this month at the White House. All four individuals who spoke about it to Politico did so on condition of anonymity.
“Charlie was a coalition builder, right? Like, he tried to bring these groups together,” one of the session’s organizers said. “Erika, kind of taking the reins in that way and seeing what she could do, it’s exactly how Charlie also operated and handled issues like this.”
Two of the four anonymous sources also credited MAHA stalwart and White House senior adviser Calley Means, as well as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, for bringing the influencers to the White House.
Like some other Trump supporters, many MAHA voters have expressed frustration and even feelings of betrayal.
In this case, the anger stems from Trump’s decision to protect the production of glyphosate, a chemical used in common weed-killers that many MAHA voters suspect of causing cancer.
In August 2024, Kennedy shook up the presidential race by joining forces with Trump. The resulting coalition, blending Kennedy’s MAHA with Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, helped Trump defeat then-Vice President Kamala Harris in a landslide.
Then, shortly after his confirmation as HHS Secretary, Kennedy pledged to examine all possible contributors to the chronic disease epidemic.
“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized: Childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra-processed foods, artificial food allergies, SSRI [anti-depressants] and other psychiatric drugs, PFAS, PFOA, microplastics — nothing is going to be off limits,” Kennedy said in February 2025.
Early this year, however, Trump issued an executive order designed to protect the domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides. In doing so, he cited the Defense Production Act of 1950 and called glyphosate “crucial to the national security and defense.”
MAHA advocates criticized the move. TPUSA’s Alex Clark, in particular, warned the White House that MAHA voters would stay home for the midterms, according to Politico.
Clark attended the White House MAHA summit. So too did Kelly Ryerson, who goes by “Glyphosate Girl” online, and nutritionist Courtney Swan, among others.
Meanwhile, MAHA influencer Vani Hari, author of the “Food Babe” blog, echoed Clark’s warning.
“Women don’t come out to vote for glyphosate and war,” she said, referring to the ongoing war in Iran. “They just don’t.”
Speaking of which, Trump has taken a gentler approach with his MAHA critics than with critics of his foreign policy.
Earlier this month, for instance, the president blasted “low IQ” conservative podcasters Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones, all of whom have criticized the Iran war, and all of whom reach much larger audiences than the MAHA influencers. Carlson and Owens, in particular, have the 9th- and 17th-ranked podcasts, respectively, overall in the United States, and the 2nd- and 4th-ranked podcasts, respectively, in the news category, according to Spotify.
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