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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Tomorrow morning, the Senate will begin its confirmation hearings for RFK Jr. nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. We plan to cover tomorrow's hearing for most of tomorrow's show, and we'll preview it for a few minutes right now. Our guest is New Yorker magazine staff writer Clare Malone. She had that long article last summer called What Does RFK , Jr., Actually Want?

Remember that article mostly made news for revealing that he once dropped a dead bear into Central Park and made it look like the bear had been hit by a bicycle and he did it as a joke, but the article had a lot more in it than that. Clare Malone is with us now for this preview of tomorrow's hearing. Hey, Clare. Welcome back to WNYC.

Clare Malone: Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: First, did I get that bear story right? It did have several moving parts that had to fit together.

Clare Malone: You got the gist. You got the gist. Dead bear in Central Park, shouldn't be there.

Brian Lehrer: Was he trying to be anti-bicycle in some way? That was one question that I got left with reading the article.

Clare Malone: Yes, at the time, there had been, I think, a spate of biker accidents around the city, and he thought he was making some kind of joke about it, yes, or some sort of visual commentary about it. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Yes, because I thought the particular accidents had been one or two bikes hitting pedestrians in Central Park. Terrible,-

Clare Malone: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: - but it plays into the whole bikes versus cars and all of that. You don't think he was trying to take a sort of pro car anti-bike position?

Clare Malone: I'm not sure that it was that clearly thought out, although I cannot speak for him on that point.

Brian Lehrer: All right. To the title of your article, What Does RFK , Jr., Actually Want-- and it's a very long article, and I recommend everybody go to the New Yorker website and read it through before tomorrow's hearing. Kidding.

Clare Malone: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: How much of what he actually wants is about vaccines?

Clare Malone: I think a great deal. I think the thrust of a lot of that piece was he's long wanted to be president, and I think what we have right now is a case of shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. The stars for him is potentially being in charge of Health and Human Services, which gives him quite a bit of control or influence over vaccines. Vaccines have sort of become his passion project over the last two decades.

I think he really wanted, A, recognition, I think, in the public that what he was doing was important, and I think we should state up front here that he has peddled a lot of misinformation about vaccines and the harms of vaccines. I think that he wanted to be taken seriously and he wanted to be put in a position of power, and he's very, very close to that.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some questions for Clare Malone or you can even answer some questions like what do you hope to hear at tomorrow's RFK Jr. confirmation hearings from him or as questions from the senators? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We are planning to devote all or most of tomorrow's show to it, like we did with the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing, and we'll see how that goes, but also any questions for Clare Malone from The New Yorker, author of the article What Does RFK , Jr., Actually Want? 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.

So to what you said a minute ago, Clare, and the thrust of a lot of the article, as you were saying, that he really wanted to be president, you have a quote of him in the article as he was gearing up his presidential campaign. People might forget already that he was running in the Democratic primary for a while. He said he wanted to spoil the election for both Biden and Trump, but then obviously he dropped out and he signed on with Trump. What's the bigger picture alignment there, if you have a sense of it? Because I don't think vaccine denial was a big priority for Trump. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Clare Malone: Well, let's back up a little bit. I do think that Trump, if we can reach back four years to Trump has lost the 2020 election, we're all talking about Ron DeSantis as a potential presidential candidate, there was some sense that Trump had been too permissive with vaccines, that he should have been more hardcore against vaccines, that he shouldn't have been in favor of lockdowns. I do think that Trump probably did feel some sense of wanting to regain some strength with his base that was very anti-vaccine, very anti-lockdown. There is a little bit of alliance there.

Going all the way back, RFK got into the race really because he had been deplatformed. He had spread misinformation through his Children's Health Defense, his anti-vaccine or vaccine skeptical organization. He had been taken off of Instagram, and he wanted those platforms back. He knew that if he ran for president, he could get his platforms back, so okay, he gets his accounts back. That is actually sympatico with Trump, right? Trump shares that experience.

Trump shares the skepticism and dislike of-- or used to. I don't know how he feels about Mark Zuckerberg now, but he shared that dislike of big tech and Facebook and Meta. I think they aligned on that point. As Kennedy got into the race, he was more and more spurned by the Democrats. He did make outreaches to the Biden and Harris campaign and was rebuffed. He's seen as a very fringe character in Democratic politics now.

Although I should note he was not even in 2008, certainly a few years after he had begun spouting anti-vaccine or vaccine skeptical views, he was still taken seriously as a potential maybe figure in the first Obama administration. I think he took very personally the Democrats not taking him seriously, and the Trump team was willing to speak with him. I think above all, he really wanted to be in a position of power. As soon as he realized that he was probably not going to win the presidency, he started thinking about how to make deals.

I think you could say a lot of things about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but he has certainly put himself into a position of power right now.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Peter in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Clare Malone from The New Yorker. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hey. Hi. As I said to the screener, RFK Jr. is nothing more than an avid hobbyist. He doesn't have a degree in medicine or in public health. He's precisely as qualified for the position as Kim Kardashian, so discussing his viewpoints or what he wants as if he were qualified, to my mind, lends him a dignity he doesn't deserve.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, well, the reason we discuss it from our standpoint is that he is one micro fraction of an inch away from having this vast amount of power over health policy, so let's inspect what his views are, and I hope that the senators do that in great detail tomorrow. If he was just out there, we weren't covering his views very much when he was just a voice out there among many with whatever opinions he had. Now he's one tiny fraction of an inch away from being the Secretary of Health and Human Services, so I think we have an obligation to explore his views and what he would implement as national policy.

Clare, to the caller's point that he doesn't have any kind of medical degree, how unusual would that be for a Secretary of Health and Human Services?

Clare Malone: It's not unusual. It's an administrative position. Usually, someone like Kathleen Sebelius I believe had helped run-- Not a doctor, but had been a governor, had helped run her state's insurance commission, I believe at some point, so had had some interaction with that. To the caller's point, though, so Health and Human Services Secretary has an inordinate amount of power when it comes to just the administration of a budget that is $1.8 trillion. Sorry. Yes, trillion. [chuckles] I was thinking that's too much, but it's it, $1.8 trillion, so a huge amount of money.

Also, the secretary has-- if we just cue specifically to vaccines, has the power to appoint people to these advisory committees that tell states and insurance companies, "Hey, we think you should recommend or cover these vaccines." RFK has the power, if he becomes Health and Human Services Secretary, to appoint people to that commission. That's a big power. He also has the power of a platform, the platform being the US Government being the the official seal of approval, and he's a Kennedy.

I totally understand the caller's point, but I really think we can't undersell how much he really helped mainstream during the pandemic a lot of this vaccine skepticism, and it was a really potent combination of his passion for vaccine skepticism and his celebrity as a Kennedy. Whether you like it or not, people pay attention to Kennedys in this country.

Brian Lehrer: Greg in Chelsea, you're on WNYC. Hello, Greg.

Greg: Hi there. Okay, I'm off speakerphone. Good morning. I've always been curious, well, in the past year or two, why RFK is presented as this, on the one hand, alternative medicine and trying to get bad chemicals out of our food and a well intentioned person with this long history of environmental justice, and on the other hand, kind of presented as a person who is misinformed and just has wacky and misguided information. His documentary with his, I think it's called Children's Defense Fund. He made a documentary two years ago during the pandemic called-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Children's Health Defense, yes, that's that same anti-vaccine skeptic group. Yes.

Greg: Right. He made this documentary with them that was called Medical Racism, and it was just so gobsmacking to me that it exploited this really ugly history of our country in the Tuskegee incident, suggesting that the COVID vaccine testing and layout was practically intended to hurt African Americans. I want to know why there's not more emphasis on this real darkness in that guy's spirit. He doesn't just seem like a misinformed person. There's something really ugly and opportunist there.

Brian Lehrer: Greg, thank you. Did you watch that documentary, Clare?

Clare Malone: I haven't watched it in full, but I do know what he is referring to. Children's Health Defense did go after during the pandemic this, yes, very historic, deep seated skepticism in the African American community about vaccines. He is right in that. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: He's trying to capitalize on that or emphasize that, but didn't he also say, was this in your article, that he thought Covid the virus was targeted to mostly affect Black people and white people and that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews were the most immune? Was that from your reporting?

Clare Malone: No, that was previous reporting. He was caught during an off-the-record session on tape. That was previous reporting, but we did mention it in the piece. Yes, there's a lot of darkness there. There's a lot of really fringe views that he-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I mean, that's really fringe. Are the senators going to call him out on that tomorrow?

Clare Malone: One would assume, yes, but I think the caller was describing the mix of descriptions of Bobby Kennedy in the media right now. I think it's a really interesting thing to zoom in on because in a lot of ways, and you see this with Democratic senators right now who are considering his confirmation, there are a lot of people who say, "You know what, he has the right idea when it comes to we have an obesity and chronic disease crisis in the country, there are too many chemicals in our food. Bobby Kennedy's talking about that. We like that."

Someone like Bernie Sanders has explicitly said, "I think that's a good thing he's been talking about." Cory Booker has-- I don't think he's openly said, yes, RFK's got some good ideas, but he has been a big proponent of being against the food industry, so I think there are Democrats who say, okay, he has some good ideas. What is, I think, I guess dangerous about overemphasizing that is that there is so much more passion that he has for the anti-vaccine stuff.

The New York Times did some reporting, I believe in December that pointed out that Kennedy had actually filed paperwork with the FDA in spring of 2021 as the COVID vaccines were rolling out petitioning that the vaccine be taken off the market. His personal lawyer did a similar petition in 2022 asking that the polio vaccine be reconsidered. This is really fringe stuff, and I would think that his feet will be held to the flames because he's got tons of podcast hours logged. He speaks freely. I think that's something, if you speak to his supporters, they say, "Well, that's why we love Bobby," but it also means that there's a really big paper trail out there.

There are some Republican senators who have been openly skeptical or tepid. Mitch McConnell is a polio survivor, and after that New York Times reporting came out, he came out and said the polio vaccine is good, it did good things and we should keep it. Which you would think is pretty basic, but such is our age. Then, you've got-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Right, so there's a contradiction, right? His lawyer filed to rescind the authorization for the polio vaccine, but he goes out there and says it's done some good. Also, that other thing that you referred to, I guess it was revealed in a New York Times story just recently that revealed at the height of the COVID vaccine rollout in 2021, I think it was, when thousands of people per week were still dying from the virus, Kennedy petitioned the government to revoke the vaccine's authorization.

Yet, recently, there's a clip of him out there saying, "I'm not going to take away any vaccines," indicating that he just wants people to have more choice, he doesn't want vaccine mandates, but those things would seem to be directly contradictory.

Clare Malone: Or at the very least, vaccines are-- You need many people to buy into vaccines. I think Bobby Kennedy during the presidential campaign used this line a lot that I think he's using on senators now and in the media, which is, I'm not against vaccines, I just want people to have options. Listen, everyone wants safe medicines for their kids, but there is not a lot of proof that these vaccines are unsafe in the way he says they are.

Sowing these seeds of doubt creates public health crises because it softens belief in vaccines, and we need lots of people to be vaccinated or else you could see what we saw in New York, in the New York area in 2019, let's say, with measles making a little bit of a comeback. I think there is a real worry among public health experts that this could have long-term effects in eroding people's trust and eroding the buy in of vaccines, and that could have really disastrous effects on young children in particular.

Brian Lehrer: Debbie in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi, Debbie.

Debbie: Hi, how are you? I'm very concerned about the skepticism about RFK on the left. I think that most of his ideas are very in line with progressive politics such as his environmental advocacy, his being anti big agro and Big Pharma. I'm really concerned that this focus on his vaccine skepticism is clouding the judgment of people on the left, and the media has been quite harsh on him. Who do we think Trump is going to appoint if he doesn't appoint RFK? I mean, let's remember what world we're in. We're not going to have a Democratic appointed person in his place.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. One thing that I read that's relevant to Debbie's concern, Clare, tell me if you have reporting or just that you've seen a similar thing that backs this up, is that RFK has basically promised to keep his mouth shut on progressive positions that he holds that are in opposition to positions that Trump holds or that Trump wants to emphasize, like on climate, also on abortion rights. Our Tuesday health and climate segments, that this is one of, acknowledge that they can be intertwined, health and climate.

If he's pro do something about the climate person and pro abortion rights person, has he promised to not do much about those in the context of being Health and Human Services Secretary in exchange for getting this nomination? Do you have anything on that?

Clare Malone: When it comes to abortion, let's say, even during his campaign, he sort of flip flopped back and forth. How pro choice am I, how anti choice am I? Even his running mate at points was unclear about where he stood on abortions and when they should be legal. I do think that he's acceding to President Trump's view on that and he'll go along with that and is probably looking to assuage senators like Joni Ernst that he's not going to rock the boat too much.

To the caller's point about Bobby Kennedy's politics about food and chemicals in certain foods does come from a anti-corporate environmentalist stance, right, where he talks about the capture of the government by these big food corporations. I think there are a lot of people on the left who applaud the stuff that he's pushing, but there are also dangerous things intertwined with that. He's saying that we should de-emphasize regulations on raw milk. Raw milk is known to help carry the pathogens that are in bird flu, and bird flu has been making a jump to humans lately.

In the scientific community, there's some alarm of what if we have a new pandemic that starts with that. I understand the caller's point, and I think she's not alone among people saying the food industry needs to be shaken up, the FDA shouldn't be so accommodating to these big food corporations. On the other hand, there are a lot of other health worries to contend with, and I think you have to look holistically at the person.

Brian Lehrer: To your point about the importance of getting a lot of kids vaccinated against childhood disease, not just those whose parents choose them, listener writes, "I'm a pediatrician. I was a resident before H flu and pneumococcal vaccines were available. We saw multiple cases each year of life threatening diseases such as bacterial meningitis, which even if survived, could cause deafness, severe developmental disabilities, and other long term effects and epiglottitis. I have not seen a single case since these vaccines have been widespread.

They, as well as measles and polio, will come back and kill children if the vaccines are less widely used. My hope for the hearings that this lunatic," as this pediatrician calls Kennedy, "is vigorously challenged and totally discredited." Josh in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Josh.

Josh: Hi. I have a question for your guest. I know that if RFK is picked, he can't stop vaccine production because that's done by private companies, or probably not research, but my question is whether he could stop vaccine coverage under Medicare and Medicaid. If that is so, most people are not going to be able to pay out of pocket for things like Covid vaccines, and that would be disastrous. I just would like to know what your guest thinks of that.

Clare Malone: I don't want to get out over my skis on the specifics of that. I would guess that, even if he had that power, he might be restrained from making such a radical move. I think Trump has come out in the past couple days and said something to the effect of, if not exactly this, don't worry, he's not going to be as radical as you think he's going to be. Where he could have some effect is there's something called a vaccine court where, in the 1980s, the US government said, "Okay, we're going to take litigation against vaccines out of the regular court system and put it in this sort of HHS-administered system."

Kennedy could take vaccines out of the vax court and say, oh, these could be litigated in regular court now, and that could have big effects on the cost of those drugs. As pharmaceutical companies weigh the potential, oh, we need to cover the potential risk of being sued. There are ways that him being at HHS could affect vaccines, but to the caller's point, I don't have specific knowledge on removal from Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good point.

Brian Lehrer: Do you happen to know, and this may be outside the scope of your reporting, whether Dr. Oz, who, let's not forget he hasn't been in the news that much over this nomination, but he's nominated by Trump to take over Medicare, and I don't think that includes Medicaid, I think it's just Medicare, but do you know if he's also anti-vax in a way that could influence the availability of vaccines under Medicare, as the caller was asking about?

Clare Malone: I believe Dr. Oz is vaccine skeptical as well. Don't quote me directly, but I believe the person that Trump wants to bring in for CDC is vaccine skeptical. RFK isn't just out there alone being the vaccine skeptic. There are a number of people that-- I think Kennedy has himself recommended perhaps for positions because he's played a role in the transition. There are a number of people who will work with scientific institutions in the US Government who are skeptical of the science of vaccines.

Brian Lehrer: Right. By the way, just to correct myself, the position that Dr. Oz is nominated for CMS is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, so it's both of those programs that would be under Dr. Oz's jurisdiction. One bit of pushback from a listener, and maybe the listener is right, so tell me if this should be corrected, listener wrote, "That's misinformation about RFK's lawyer and a lawsuit against the normally used polio vaccine. The lawyer was not representing RFK or the well known polio shot everyone gets. The lawsuit was about just one new experimental polio vaccine that was about to be brought to market," and it goes on from there.

Clare Malone: I never said that he was representing RFK. I said that RFK's lawyer filed a petition. Yes. I'll take the listener's word about what specific medication, but yes, no, I said that the lawyer filed it.

Brian Lehrer: Right. A similar concern to that last caller about Medicare and Medicaid, listener writes, "What exactly does he have the power to do to vaccines? I have a two-month old baby who I very much want to receive the full slate of infant and child immunizations, but we can never pay for them all out of pocket." There's that concern. We will see tomorrow, as we wrap up this segment for now, what the senators do ask RFK Jr. about when his confirmation hearing begins.

Again, we're planning to devote all or most of tomorrow's show, depending on how the hearing goes, to coverage of that hearing which is supposed to begin around 9:30 tomorrow morning. For today, we thank Clare Malone, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the comprehensive article that came out last summer, What Does RFK, Jr., Actually Want? Clare, thanks a lot.

Clare Malone: Thanks so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to talk about another nominee who's falling much more below the radar right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We've been talking about RFK Jr.'s confirmation hearing tomorrow, and there's been a lot of focus on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth now confirmed and Tulsi Gabbard, who also gets a hearing this week for director of national intelligence for the Trump administration. Many others have mostly fallen through the cracks of media coverage. We'll discuss one of them now, especially in the context of climate and of health. It's Agriculture secretary nominee Brooke Rollins, not a household name, but actually very close to Trump.

We'll get a take on her for a few minutes now from Ian Ward, who covers the political right for Politico. His article about Brooke Rollins came out just before the election. Hi, Ian. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Ian Ward: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Rollins worked in the first Trump White House, and you say she rose from that to become a driving force behind the Trump transition effort. What did she do during Trump one, because probably nobody listening right now ever heard of her, or hardly anyone, and what caused her to rise in influence?

Ian Ward: Rollins is a staple of Trump's inner circle, and she's one of the rare operatives who's been in Trump's camp more or less continually since the beginning of his political career. Back in 2016, she was the CEO of an influential think tank in Texas, but she joined his campaign back then as an economic advisor, and she went on to lead the Office of American Innovation during the first Trump White House, which was a new office created by Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner. After that, she became the chair of the Domestic Policy Council, which is the chief policy advisory board in the White House.

Then, the really important and interesting work begins after she left the White House in 2020 when she went on to found a think tank called the America First Policy Institute, which was often described as a kind of White House in waiting for magaworld. In that capacity, she did a lot of work laying the policy foundations for the current administration. She's a Trump loyalist, a longtime confidant, and someone who historically has had the President's ear and who had a lot of influence in the transition by virtue of her role at the America First Policy Institute.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of Rollin just so listeners who've never heard her or never heard of her can hear a voice. This is from her confirmation hearing last week laying out some top priorities.

Brooke Rollins: First, we must ensure that the disaster and economic assistance authorized by Congress is deployed as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Second, we must work with the great men and women of USDA, the stakeholder communities, and state leaders, my deep background in state policy, to immediately and comprehensively get a handle on the state of animal disease outbreaks.

Third, we must immediately begin to modernize, realign, rethink the United States Department of Agriculture, responding to the clear needs and the desires of the American people, as set forth so well by the President of the United States over this last historic week.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Now, that clip might raise a few questions for people, and I'm going to go on to something she said just after that about longer-term priorities.

Brooke Rollins: This includes exploring improvements to our rural development programs, demanding strong and steady domestic and export markets for our beautiful agriculture bounty, eliminating burdensome and costly regulations that hamper innovation, ensuring our nutrition programs are effective and efficient, and putting in the work to make sure we have a healthy and prepared next generation of farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and indeed all Americans.

Brian Lehrer: Ian, do we learn anything from those clips?

Ian Ward: Not a lot. I mean, I think an important thing to preface Rollins' appointment with is that she's not an agricultural expert. Even during the first White House, she didn't work closely on the agriculture portfolio. The extent of her experience in agriculture seems to be that she grew up on a farm in Texas. She graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in agricultural development. She was a member of the 4-H group. She's a bit of a newcomer to the world of agriculture in that respect.

The hearing was a lot of high-level promises and generalities and not a lot of specifics, and I think you're seeing a bit of a reflection of her inexperience in the field, perhaps.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and certainly there were a lot of generalities in those clips. One thing that caught my ear from the second one was when she talked about the effectiveness and efficiency of nutrition programs. Now, the Agriculture Department has a relationship to the food stamps program, doesn't it?

Ian Ward: Yes, SNAP. I think it administers SNAP.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if this is within your reporting, but does she have power over food stamps? Because that's something that the right always says they want to cut.

Ian Ward: Yes. I think the big conversation is whether a person from the Make America Healthy Again movement, an RFK follower, wants to shake up that program and get healthier food, right, through the SNAP program. I think from what we've seen from Rollins, she's not as much of a institution smasher as an RFK. She has signaled some more sympathy to what he would call big ag, corporate agriculture. To the extent that she would do reforms to SNAP, I think it would be in the direction of scaling it back as opposed to doing radical changes to what it covers or targeting food systems and things of that nature.

Brian Lehrer: What you're saying there sounds to me like rather than trying to make food stamps healthier again, or let's say maybe restrict what people could buy with food stamps so they're not buying junk foods, which I know some critics of the food stamp program, the SNAP program, have raised, rather than trying to focus on it promoting health, she would be focused, as some others are, on saving the government money because, to put it bluntly, these poor people are getting over on us?

Ian Ward: Yes, and protecting various corporate interests who have a stake in maintaining the status quo within the food stamp industry.

Brian Lehrer: Right, which probably wouldn't restrict unhealthy foods. You do write, though, that among the nationalist populist wing of the GOP, Rollins and her allies are viewed as the rump faction of the old Republican establishment dedicated to preserving the pre-Trump political orthodoxy that prioritizes free trade, deregulation, business friendly economic policies, and an expansive role for the US on the global stage. That would be old line Republicanism rather than the kind of MAGA radicalism that we're seeing implemented in all these executive orders in the first week. Explain.

Ian Ward: Yes, that's pretty much right. When I wrote the profile, there was a lot of chatter that Rollins was actually in contention to be White House chief of staff. That aroused a lot of suspicion, as you said, among some of the hardline MAGA crowd who really do see her as too connected to the old guard Republican establishment. I mean, for some context, she came up politically as the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which was a Koch backed think tank in Texas that became a sort of institutional home for the Tea Party movement.

It had a very pro corporate, anti-regulation, free market slant. A real bastion of the pre-Trump Republican Party and pre-Trump conservatism. She's pivoted a bit and is now very loyal to Trump, and I think her devotion to him is sincere, but many people within the movement think she's a bit of an atavism, right, a remnant of the old Republican establishment and are skeptical of that. They scuttled her ascendancy to chief of staff. That job ultimately went to Susie Wiles, Trump's campaign manager, and not to Rollins, who ended up in USDA.

I think that's a reflection of the skepticism of some of his advisors of her past and her ideological alignment with the movement.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's interesting. Does that put her at odds with JD Vance at all? Because I was reading your profile of Vance, which was also before the election, but that seemed to place him in a new wing of the Republican Party, that among all the other things it is, is a little anti-corporate.

Ian Ward: Yes. I think the way to think about this is there's a spectrum within Trump world between loyalists and ideologues. Loyalists are people who back Trump's agenda because they're personally very loyal to him, and then there are ideologues who back Trump's agenda because they see it as a useful vehicle for their own idiosyncratic brand of conservatism. I think Vance falls close to the latter description, he's an ideologue, and Rollins perhaps falls closer to the loyalist side.

I think insofar as she's a very dogged loyalist to the MAGA movement, she's in alignment with Vance, but Vance has some revolutionary tendencies, for lack of a better word, and Rollins does not, I think. In that respect, they're on different sides of the playing field.

Brian Lehrer: Just to take a brief detour into JD Vance and your reporting on him, and then I want to come back to Rollins and climate in particular as Agriculture Secretary, you portrayed him as potentially the Trump administration's dealmaker in chief with Democrats in Congress, or he had a little bit of that reputation when he was senator from Ohio. Do you see any JD vance, Elizabeth Warren, check the power of corporate America in certain respects things coming down the pike maybe?

Ian Ward: Yes. I think the way to think about Vance's role in the second administration is as a bridge to the American elite broadly, and that's both the conservative and the Democratic or liberal elite. He is fluent in the language of your listeners and The New York Times. He can be an ambassador for Magaland to go out and convince elites of all stripes that what the MAGA movement is doing is not that ridiculous and that they should get behind it.

That, on the one hand, looks like going to Silicon Valley and telling them to get in line behind some of Trump's populism and also looks like going to people like Elizabeth Warren and other progressives on the Hill and saying, look, there's areas of alignment here on trade, potentially on antitrust, on regulation, things like that. Yes, I think you'll see him play that role across the board.

Brian Lehrer: Now, Agriculture, where Brooke Rollins is going to be the secretary, is also seen as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Is Brooke Rollins someone with strong opinions on climate or energy policy? Because she also said at her hearing, I was watching some of the clips, that agriculture is related to fuel development, so it's related to those two things that sometimes get counterposed, climate and fuel, or sometimes they can connect. Does she have strong opinions on these things as it relates to agriculture?

Ian Ward: Yes, I haven't reported extensively on her climate views. I do know that while she was at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, they were very, very friendly towards oil and gas interests. I also know during the hearing there was a question of her views on ethanol production, which at one point she had opposed, and now I think in this capacity she's opened the door towards. Another kind of climate adjacent policy that drew some attention in the hearing was Proposition 12, which is a California law that places restrictions on the sale of certain types of animal products that don't meet humane standards.

Thinking restrictions on the sale of pork that are from pigs who were raised in tiny enclosures and not allowed to be free range. Joni Ernst, the senator, brought this up during the hearing, and Rollins said she would oppose a bill that would repeal Prop 12, allowing companies to sell meat that wasn't raised humanely. Again, signaling her alignment with what an RFK would call big agriculture and corporate interests over the MAHA shakeup of the food and ag industry.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. She did mention animal disease in the clip from the confirmation hearing that we played. Do you know if she would be a hawk on bird flu, which is starting to infect people as well as animals? In our RFK segment before you came on, there were some listeners who were expressing concern that he wouldn't take seriously and generally the Trump administration wouldn't take seriously preparing for bird flu, certainly not at the level of vaccine, but maybe even not at the level of prevention.

Ian Ward: Yes, I think bird flu is one of those things that requires an enormous amount of interagency cooperation. She by no means has unilateral control over bird flu. I think what you see is that bird flu is actually very bad for farmers. You see they have to kill off large portions of their stock. It tends to sink meat sales. I think she has a vested interest in working to contain it. The two things I think are really notable and worth mentioning from her hearing are her responses to questions about the impact of Trump's trade and immigration policies on agriculture.

I mean, the US Agriculture industry is dependent largely on foreign exports and on undocumented labor. I think up to 40% of the workforce in agriculture is undocumented workers. Obviously, Trump has campaigned and promised both to crack down on trade and escalate trade wars and also to crack down on immigration. Those are two things that would have a very direct and immediate and material impact on the Agriculture Department.

She didn't put forth really concrete ways of addressing those impacts beyond reviving a first term Trump policy to subsidize farmers who were impacted by retaliatory tariffs. Those are two big areas to keep an eye on, I think.

Brian Lehrer: I guess also when we talk about bird flu, it relates to the price of eggs, which are so high in part because of bird flu. The cynical view on Trump's election is people discounted the fact that he might destroy our democracy or that he's a convicted felon or sex abuser found liable for sex abuse because they thought he would do a better job bringing down the price of eggs. That would indicate that he should be serious about bird flu. Yes?

Ian Ward: Yes, yes. I mean, that's one of those issues that, in the Trumpian political universe, carries a lot of weight, being able to show that they're addressing pocketbook issues. You know what else raises the cost of eggs, are retaliatory tariffs, so it's a complicated nexus of economic forces there.

Brian Lehrer: Anything else you would want to raise before we end this? Because most of our audience is in the New York City area, not much personal stake in who the AG Secretary is, as they probably think about it very little. Is there anything else you want to flag that could be of national importance even around here?

Ian Ward: I would just highlight the way in which Rollins is serving as a foil to RFK Jr. who you discussed earlier in the segment. I mean, just one tidbit that illustrates this well, I think, is that as her chief of staff, Rollins picked a woman named Kailee Buller, who most recently served as the president and CEO of the National Oilseed Processors Association, which is the trade organization representing seed oils. If your listeners have been paying attention to RFK Jr.'s rhetoric, he is very skeptical of seed oils.

He and the ecosystem of MAHA supporters have spoken out about what they see as the negative health effects of seed oils, and then Rollins turns around and picks one of the major advocates for the seed oil industry as her number two at USDA. It's the interesting illustration of the fault lines within this coalition that Trump's put together.

Brian Lehrer: Ian Ward, who covers the political right for Politico. Ian, thanks very much.

Ian Ward: Thanks, Brian.

 

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