Two weeks after right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump’s Rasputin Laura Loomer seemingly orchestrated his ouster, Vinay Prasad is back as the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator.
In a different world, it would be a cause for celebration that the Trump administration realized it is extremely weird to fire a health professional based on the views of a random bigot with no actual role in government. But we live in this world, and while it’s great to see Loomer fail, getting Prasad back at the FDA is not exactly great either.
Reinstated Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine regulator Vinay Prasad
In Loomer’s conspiracy-addled brain, Prasad is a “Trump-hating Bernie Bro” who was undermining President Donald Trump. In the real world, Prasad was the guy who overrode FDA experts to sign on to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-science decision to limit use of COVID-19 vaccines. He was happy to put his name on the administration’s efforts to make the COVID vaccine less available and has criticized mask mandates.
The administration can’t come out and say that it fired the nation’s head vaccine regulator because Loomer said so, which means it has to spin Prasad’s firing as being someone else’s fault. Whose? The media, duh.
Here’s HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon: “At the FDA’s request, Dr. Vinay Prasad is resuming leadership of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Neither the White House nor HHS will allow the fake news media to distract from the critical work the FDA is carrying out under the Trump administration.”
Andrew, the fake news media didn’t fire Prasad. Indeed, when Prasad got tossed, the White House made an official statement explaining how necessary it was: “It is not only appropriate, but critical for the Administration to recruit the most qualified and experienced staffers who are totally aligned with President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again.”
Reporting at the time showed that Trump overruled Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, both of whom opposed getting rid of Prasad. Guess we’ll just pretend that never happened.
Prasad’s return is a rare setback for Loomer, who has otherwise successfully engineered a spate of firings of anyone she deems insufficiently MAGA. Last month, she got one of the top lawyers at the National Security Agency fired by claiming she was a Biden administration plant. And why not? She’d already orchestrated the ousting of the NSA director, Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, and his deputy, Wendy Noble, back in April. According to ABC News, Loomer has played a role in at least 15 departures, be that by getting people fired or getting nominations withdrawn.
“Loony Loomer” by Clay Jones
Loomer’s role here is odd, and not just because a woman largely notable for chaining herself to the doors of Twitter’s headquarters has remarkable sway in the administration’s employment decisions. Though neither Loomer nor Trump would ever admit it, the entire basis of Loomer’s schtick is basically that Trump is too stupid to understand who he is choosing for his administration. Loomer sees herself as ferreting out those who oppose Trump, but that gets very weird when they are people tapped by Trump versus someone Loomer can point to as a holdover from the Biden administration.
For example, in May, Trump pulled his nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general after Loomer declared her too pro-vaccine and also a Democrat and also pro turning kids trans. Loomer excused Trump, saying instead that he has the “WORST VETTING TEAM EVER.” That just makes it sound like Trump is easily bamboozled by his vetting team, which is apparently made up of secret communists.
Loomer is not taking Prasad’s return lying down, because she’s here to protect Trump from himself. So she’s going to be “ramping up my exposes of officials within the HHS and FDA so the American people can see more of the pay for play rot themselves and how rabid Trump haters continue to be hired in the Trump administration.”
While it’s fun, in a schadenfreude kind of way, to watch the chaos of FDA leadership under Trump and to see terrible people like Prasad lose their government jobs, it is extremely not great for the agency. Prasad got the job only in May after Kennedy forced out Dr. Peter Marks, who played a key role in Operation Warp Speed, Trump’s first-term COVID-19 vaccine program. During Prasad’s incredibly brief initial tenure, his division was a hot, leaky mess, with companies finding out about regulatory actions only after they hit the media.
Prasad spent less than three months on the job, only to return less than two weeks after his firing. It remains to be seen if Loomer has the juice to get him tossed again, but no matter what, this is no way to run a government.
