“He’s a great doctor, and he was having some difficulty,” President Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday. “But he’s going to go on and he’s going to do well.”
The FDA commissioner, as the leader of an agency that regulates billions of dollars in consumer goods and medicines, is often required to juggle competing priorities that straddle science and politics.
Makary faced a unique challenge in balancing calls by Trump and other Republicans to cut red tape at the FDA, while also tending to Kennedy’s interest in scrutinizing of the safety vaccines, drugs and food additives.
Pro-life groups have criticized Makary for slow-walking an internal review of the abortion pill mifepristone.
A Fox News story on the resignation noted that when Trump was elected, pro-life groups and voters were banking on the administration rolling-back Biden-era rules that allowed mifepristone to be prescribed online and shipped through the mail. But the FDA left those rules intact and last year, under Makary’s leadership, approved a new generic version of the pill.
