During his yearlong tenure leading the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary managed to bother various constituencies, but it was fruit-flavored vapes that apparently sealed his fate.
Tobacco industry executives and lobbyists leaned on Donald Trump and his team to expand access to the flavored vaping products, a move that Makary had been slow to approve. By some accounts, the president ended up personally “upbraiding” the FDA commissioner on the matter.
The agency ultimately did what the White House wanted and authorized the fruit-flavored vapes, shortly after Trump’s intervention, but the damage to Makary’s role at the FDA proved too much. He and the administration parted ways days later.
What we didn’t know about the developments, however, was the possible role of a political contribution. The New York Times reported:
The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by President Trump last month, about one week before his administration rolled out a new policy that could prove lucrative to the tobacco industry.
The donation, which came through a Reynolds subsidiary and brings to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, was revealed in a campaign finance report filed Wednesday night.
A White House spokesperson told the Times that the donation was unrelated to the administration’s policy, and the “only guiding factor” was “gold standard science.”
Perhaps. But the timeline is striking:
- April 30: Tobacco giant donates $5 million to Trump-aligned super PAC
- May 1: Tobacco giant’s executive and lobbyists get an in-person lunch with Trump
- May 1: Trump interrupts lunch to call the FDA commissioner and other leading officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, echoing the industry’s line
- May 8: The FDA bypasses its regular rulemaking process and delivers the policy the tobacco giant wanted
Maybe the $5 million contribution was entirely irrelevant, but if so, that’s quite a coincidence.
What’s more, it’s also the latest in a series of eerily similar coincidences. Earlier this year, for example, the Times had a striking report about a Venezuelan-Italian banker who was facing a variety of serious felony charges, right up until his daughter made a generous contribution to the same Trump-aligned super PAC. The president signed a pardon for the banker soon after.
A week later, the Times had a separate report on the nursing home industry, which hoped to block a Biden-era policy that would have required increased staffing levels. The industry started writing a series of generous checks to the same Trump-aligned super PAC, and soon after, Trump administration officials abandoned their support for the policy the industry opposed.
In February, on the heels of a $1 million donation to the same Trump-aligned super PAC, a billionaire opponent of the Gordie Howe International Bridge convinced the Republican administration to abandon its own position and also oppose the project.
With a pattern like this, it’s tough to ignore the pay-for-play appearances in an administration for which corruption allegations have become the norm.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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