One of the most striking things about the second Trump administration is the diversity of opinions and specialties he has embraced and brought into his administration.
They all share the same goals, but in a very real sense, he has created a “team of rivals”–the term Doris Kearns Goodwin used to describe Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet during the Civil War. Briliant men, big personalities, clashing visions on how to achieve a common goal.
Everybody has focused on Elon Musk’s occasional abrasive conflicts with cabinet members, but as Trump’s Health and Human Services team has come together, a different sort of collaborative relationship has developed among men who have strikingly different approaches to achieving a similar set of goals–making America a healthier place.
There appears to be no friction between the team–they call each other friends–but anybody who has followed the careers of RFK, Jr., Marty Makery, Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Oz, you can’t help but be struck by how different their backgrounds, experience, and rhetorical approaches are.
They aren’t rivals, per se, in the way that Musk and Rubio are, and their skills are complementary in a way that I hope will help rebuild the public health establishment that has been battered so much in recent years. They aren’t clones of each other–their skills and temperaments seem to click together like different pieces of a puzzle.
I thought of this as I watched this interview with the four of them–I wish Dr. Vinay Prasad, a recent Trump hire–had also been included, but such is life.
RFK Jr. opened the interview with Bret Baier by highlighting how uniquely close his relationship is with the heads of his agencies.
“We’re friends. We go to lunch together. We stay at each other’s homes. We vacation together. We’re also aligned in our vision.”
“Friendship is… pic.twitter.com/OeTYrJ6fy5
— American Values
(@AVPac_US) May 9, 2025
RFK, Jr. scares a lot of people, even those who recognize that the current public health elite has rightfully lost the trust of the American people. He has the reputation of being a crank–a reputation that has been relentlessly pushed by the very establishment that lost the trust of Americans. His criticism of how vaccines are tested, relentlessly pushed without regard to their appropriateness in all circumstances, and his speculations that the vaccine schedule is perhaps the cause of the autism epidemic, make people worry that his priors will lead him to discourage people from taking precautionary measures.
I don’t think he is a crank, but I also don’t know enough to judge his tentative conclusion that the vaccine schedule contributes to the autism epidemic or even whether such an epidemic truly exists or is an artifact of changed diagnosis methods.
That’s where Bhattacharya comes in.
Dr. Oz was up next to discuss his main priority at CMS.
“Our goal is to put health back in health and human services.”
“There’s a quote from Hubert Humphrey… he says, ‘it’s the moral obligation of government to take care of those of us at the very dawn of our lives, children,… pic.twitter.com/Z7Y2cqT1hr
— American Values
Jay is a scientist to the core, and his experience with economic thinking and epidemiology will prove invaluable in sussing out the answers to these and other questions. He fully understands the deficiencies built into our current public health and research priorities, but he is not the type to rely on priors to come up with answers that please anybody’s ideological preferences. If there is a man who approaches issues without fear or favor, Jay fits the bill.
Nobody can question his commitment to science or his courage in telling hard truths nobody wants to hear.
Dr. Bhattacharya then gave a quick overview of his top priorities at NIH and the recent ban on gain-of-function funding.
“The mission of the NIH is to do research that improves the health and longevity of the American people.”
“The NIH has not done its mission over the last… pic.twitter.com/qY08pkXBAR
— American Values
Makery, too, fits that bill. Along with Jay, he was a standout in the fight for rationality when everybody was running around with his hair on fire.
RFK Jr. closed the interview by expressing his support for President Trump’s recent Surgeon General nomination.
“Casey Means we felt was the best person to really bring the vision of MAHA to the American public.”
“She wrote a book that really mobilized the movement.”
“She was… pic.twitter.com/KSZSracds6
— American Values
Ironically, I can say the least about Dr. Oz, even though he is the most public and famous of the three RFK, Jr. partners. A doctor, television personality, and former candidate for Senate, I just haven’t followed his career. He, from all appearances, seems to fit in with the team, but I won’t pretend to have much insight into him or his thinking.
I guess that tells you how well I follow popular culture.
As of now, we can only make preliminary judgments about how this team will mesh and how much they can accomplish, but they are beginning at the right point: our current system is not just broken, but compromised by conflicts of interest that make it a danger to America. For all the talk of “trusting the science” in recent years, there was precious little science built into the system to trust.
All of these men realize that and are determined to fix it. Whether they can succeed will only become clear with time.
All I can say for certain is that so far they are making all the right moves, and that the establishment will fight them every step along the way.
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