McDonald’s didn’t offer $850 million to keep RFK Jr. from exposing its frying secrets

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, has been a vocal critic of McDonald’s and other fast food.

On Nov. 11, he called the food offerings served on Trump’s plane "poison." Days later, he, Trump, Elon Musk and others posed for a picture on the plane as they prepared to enjoy a meal from the fast-food giant.

An Instagram post claimed that Kennedy exposed information about McDonald’s that the company tried to suppress with a hush-money payment.

"McDonald’s offered 850 million to RFK for hush money," a Nov. 18 Instagram post said. A woman in the video said, "Listen to what RFK just exposed about the Golden Arches because they are currently trying to get the video removed."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The woman speaking in the video did not provide any information about the supposed hush-money payment offer. McDonald’s did not return our request for comment. We found no evidence of such an offer in Google and Nexis news database searches, or on Kennedy’s social media accounts, where he would have likely mentioned such an offer.

Nor did Kennedy "expose" anything new about McDonald’s, as the woman claimed.

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The video played a clip of Kennedy’s Oct. 29 appearance on Fox & Friends, during which he talked about Trump’s campaign event at a McDonald’s drive-through. Kennedy said he wasn’t against fast food, but rather seed oils, and said McDonald’s should return to frying food in tallow fat instead.

That McDonald’s uses seed oil and not beef tallow to make its french fries is not a revelation Kennedy exposed. McDonald’s — along with fast-food competitors Burger King and Wendy’s — made the switch from beef tallow in 1990 amid national concerns about saturated fat in Americans’ diets.

McDonald’s website said the company uses a canola-blend oil to fry potatoes at its restaurants, and said its cut potato suppliers partially fry them first in an oil blend that contains beef flavoring.

Kennedy argues that seed oils such as canola oil are causing an obesity epidemic.

The New York Times reported that experts said research of seed oils shows the opposite, and that they are much healthier than using animal fat.

We find no basis to the claim that McDonald’s offered Kennedy a $850 million hush money payment related to its frying oil. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!