The Swamp survived the first term of President Trump. It doesn’t look like they’re prepared this time.
Because heads are starting to roll after the Trump team announces who they’re firing.
On Saturday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urged the incoming Trump administration to “act fast” on sweeping reforms at the National Institutes of Health, proposing that up to 600 employees at the federal agency be replaced.
“We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20, so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave,” Kennedy declared at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The Democrat-turned-Trump supporter has consistently argued that federal health agencies are “captured” by the very pharmaceutical companies they are meant to regulate, equating the situation to “corruption” that endangers Americans’ health and safety.
Kennedy, 70, revealed that he’s currently raising $10 million to help secure key roles in the Department of Health and Human Services by the time Trump takes office, according to ABC News.
“We need to be able to respond very quickly and need to have a really, really good crack staff right now — we have the people, [but] we need to get them paid, we need to get them housing in Florida, so they can be right there when we walk into these transition meetings day after day,” he explained.
Kennedy also offered a look into Trump’s rapid-fire approach to choosing people for his administration.
“He comes into the meeting and he very quickly — you know, there are eight giant screens and each person has a picture of themselves on the screen, they have a biography next to them, you can press a button and see three different clips of that person … and he goes through them very, very quickly and he says, ‘I want that guy,’” said the former environmental lawyer.
Kennedy described Trump as someone who listens to input but makes firm and fast decisions, “And he decides very quickly. And the meetings are very quick when he comes in.”
Kennedy, along with his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy and billionaire Elon Musk, has been in the room when Trump is making personnel decisions.
“These are all alpha people,” Kennedy noted.
“They’re, you know, they have very strong ideas about what should happen, but [Trump] makes the decisions.”
Kennedy is anticipated to have a significant health policy role in Trump’s administration, though not necessarily as HHS secretary.
Prior to the election, Trump’s White House transition co-chair Howard Lutnick dismissed the notion of Kennedy leading HHS.
“That’s not what he wants to do,” Lutnick remarked last month.
“He just wants data, and he wants to prove things [about vaccines] are wrong. And he says, ‘If I can’t prove they’re wrong, that’s fine. But if I can, I can save millions of Americans’ lives and make their lives better.’”
Kennedy’s team has been contacted for further comment.
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