The current Health Secretary of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has a post on his official X account today that depicts a version of him fighting a donut in what is clearly a parody of Smash Bros. In fact, the background in the post’s video is ripped straight from a classic stage in the game based on Nintendo’s JRPG gem EarthBound. The video ends with RFK’s character flipping a pyramid upside-down and launching the donut off the stage with it, which is a reference to the revised food pyramid he has pushed, which prioritizes meat, dairy, and vegetables over previously championed grains.

Real food wins! pic.twitter.com/ItYduZawow

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) March 9, 2026

Nintendo has not made a response to this, though if they did, it might be concerned more about the possible copyright infringement rather than the political message of the post, as it’s not necessarily super controversial, barring debates of the nuances of RFK’s nutritional claims under his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign. Nintendo and the Trump admin have had several contentious run-ins recently, including an ongoing lawsuit the company has filed against the U.S. Government regarding the effects of last year’s tariffs, and a controversial post involving Pokémon that the IP’s spokeswoman Sravanthi Dev has publicly condemned. This also wouldn’t be the first time that the current administration has utilized the imagery of popular video games for propagandistic purposes. The White House’s X account has received flak for making several posts involving Halo–which the voice actor for Master Chief, Steve Downes, denounced and distanced himself from–and a few days ago released an infamous post promoting military aggression in Iran featuring Call of Duty. It indeed seems that the current administration’s media strategy has leaned into the world of gaming, but the reason for this hasn’t crystallized yet. Despite pushback, the White House continues to post inflammatory content. Perhaps the gaming aspect of their social campaign is an attempt to reach out to a younger base–or to whom the Trump admin thinks their base is–or maybe they believe that roping in popular franchises like Halo, Pokémon, and COD with objectionable politics makes for good engagement. The message here in RFK’s post luckily isn’t as violent or rhetorically repugnant as others have been, but it is bizarre.