Bottled-up rage: This is what Trump derangement syndrome looks like

Only Donald Trump could make the legacy corporate media defend corn syrup.

Last week, the president announced that Coca-Cola would begin directly offering Americans a new choice: Coca-Cola sweetened with cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup. Coca-Cola confirmed the news this week.

Instead of being honest, NBC News essentially ran defense for corn syrup — because Trump criticized it.

It's another victory for the Make America Healthy Again movement. But reaction to the announcement was as predictable as it was absurd.

Within hours of Trump's announcement, NBC News published a story — citing medical “experts,” of course — questioning whether cane sugar is better than corn syrup. “As Trump pushes for cane sugar in Coca-Cola, is it really better than corn syrup?” the headline asked.

Its conclusion: not really. It's “essentially the same.” Nothing to see here.

But there is something to see here — quite a bit, in fact.

NBC News' reaction is yet another example of how Trump's critics, sick with Trump derangement syndrome, reflexively oppose anything he does, taking the losing side of an 80/20 issue. Protecting your children from radical trans ideology? Bigotry. Border security? That's racist. Want real sugar in your soda instead of a processed, factory-engineered syrup made from crops sprayed with dangerous chemicals? Nope, can't support that.

You don't need a doctorate in nutrition or to be a medical doctor to know that HFCS is bad for you. It has long been associated with poor health outcomes like obesity, insulin resistance, and other metabolic diseases. It’s cheap, it’s everywhere, and it’s a product of a food system that routinely puts profits over Americans' health.

RELATED: Who is bankrolling the anti-MAHA movement?

  Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

It's no coincidence that poor health outcomes exploded when American food manufacturers began using processed, factory-engineered products like corn syrup and seed oils. Moreover, we intuitively know that natural food products — like cane sugar — are better for our health than cheaper, processed alternatives.

And yet, NBC News is on a campaign to debunk this widely acknowledged fact. It's a move straight from the legacy media's anti-Trump playbook.

NBC News cited Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, who said cane sugar and HFCS have “identical metabolic effects” because “high-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are about 50% fructose, 50% glucose.”

That might be true in biochemistry textbooks. But real-world nutrition is not only about molecules. It’s about systems, and our reliance on HFCS is evidence that our food system is deeply broken.

Food manufacturers use HFCS because it's cheaper, not because it’s healthy. It became dominant in the 1970s and 1980s through agricultural subsidies, corporate lobbying, and a food industry obsessed with maximizing profit margins. It's addictive and engineered for invisibility. It normalizes excess consumption, and it's seemingly in everything: soda, candy, bread, condiments, salad dressings, and snack foods, including many foods you don't realize are sweetened unless you look at the nutritional label.

If the food or drink product you purchase is found in the middle of the grocery store, chances are it contains HFCS or some other manufactured derivative with a different name.

Cane sugar, on the other hand, is less processed, less ubiquitous, and more easily avoided. Plus, it comes from nature. We intuitively know which is better to eat.

RELATED: Death to seed oils

   Supranee Bunchoo via iStock/Getty Images

This isn’t really about the ingredients in Coca-Cola. It's about the battle at the heart of the Make America Healthy Again movement — a battle not just against bad ingredients and chemicals, but the propaganda machine that protects a system making us fat, sick, and dependent on the pharmaceutical industry.

MAHA is about reclaiming your birthright to food freedom and metabolic health. It’s about common sense and trusting your instincts — not “experts” and elites who gaslight you into oblivion. America spends more on health care than any other developed nation and has the best quality of care in the world, yet our health outcomes are significantly worse. Everyone knows something is wrong, and everyone knows it starts with our food.

That’s why NBC News’ “fact check” is so dishonest.

For decades, the media and scientific establishment downplayed sugar's role in skyrocketing rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction — all while scapegoating fat as the villain. They pushed low-fat, high-carb processed foods as healthy (remember the food pyramid?), helping enrich Big Food and Big Pharma. Tens of millions Americans paid the price with their health, and the problem is only getting worse.

But instead of being honest, NBC News essentially ran defense for corn syrup — because Trump criticized it. That’s activism, not journalism.

The reaction from NBC News is symbolic of the many problems fatiguing Americans: We are sick, and we want real food. We want honesty and transparency from corporations and the media. We are tired of being used by industries that don't care about us and a media that manipulates us.

The MAHA movement is exposing these broken systems, and Trump's instincts — once again — are correct. He may not be a doctor or nutrition expert (he loves McDonald's, after all), but the experts clearly cannot be trusted. Once again, Trump is on the right side of an 80/20 issue.

Coca-Cola made the right move. And NBC News, in its blind opposition to Trump, just proved again why no one trusts it anymore.