{"id":69521,"date":"2026-05-13T14:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/69521\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:56:09","slug":"kyle-diamantas-new-fda-commissioner-is-don-jr-s-hunting-buddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/69521\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Diamantas, New FDA Commissioner, Is Don Jr.’s Hunting Buddy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf you\u2019ve ever swallowed an aspirin, put milk in your coffee, fed your pet, or filled a prescription, then you\u2019ve relied on the lifesaving oversight of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Long viewed as the world\u2019s gold standard in regulating food and medicine, the FDA<\/a> is a behemoth that oversees products comprising roughly one quarter of the U.S. economy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEven on the best of days, the FDA commissioner \u2014 a Senate-confirmed position \u2014 must wander a pitiless wilderness of excruciating judgement calls, whether the record-speed approval of Covid-19 vaccines or the minefield of mail-order birth control pills, all while fending off powerful companies expecting VIP treatment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDoing the job well, or even at all, is not a friend-building exercise.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter days of being dangled like a cat toy between warring parties in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees FDA, news broke on Tuesday that President Donald Trump\u2019s embattled FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, was resigning.<\/p>\n

\n\tAttention immediately turned to the question of which towering medical figure might step into the job. Soon after Trump posted Makary\u2019s resignation text to Truth Social, Kyle Diamantas<\/a>, 38, an obscure Florida lawyer who first landed at the FDA in 2025 as director of the human foods program, following his previous role as Don Jr.\u2019s hunting buddy, was named acting FDA commissioner.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March 2021, Don Jr. and Diamantas posed holding dead Osceola wild turkeys, as I had first reported<\/a>. Mike Tussey,\u00a0the founder of the hunting outfit Osceola Outdoors, described the scene on X<\/a> as: \u201cDon Jr. With his good friend Kyle Diamantas! Kyle\u2019s first Osceola!\u201d A picture of Trump Jr., Diamantas, and Tussey, with a single turkey, is featured on Osceola Outdoors\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow you get from hunting turkeys with the president\u2019s son, to overseeing 1,000 employees in the FDA\u2019s human foods program, to serving as acting FDA commissioner is a story whose outlines have become familiar throughout Trump\u2019s second administration, where being buddies with the right people is a qualification in and of itself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is perhaps testament to the current state of the FDA that Diamantas was the only deputy commissioner who could credibly assume the role, says Susan Mayne, professor adjunct at Yale School of Public Health, who served as the FDA\u2019s director of food safety and applied nutrition from 2015 to 2023. \u201cMr. Diamantas is not an MD. It\u2019s an unusual choice. But given the circumstances, it\u2019s the logical choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter DOGE staff cuts devastated the agency, and ongoing turmoil has led scientists to leave in droves, the FDA organizational chart has been denuded of leadership. And in an FDA wracked by diva-style personnel eruptions, Diamantas had a \u201cmore balanced style of leadership,\u201d says Mayne.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn what should have been a sober regulatory environment, under Makary\u2019s stewardship, chaos was often the headline. There was the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, George Tidmarsh, who was forced to resign, after allegedly using his regulatory role inside the agency to pursue a vendetta against a former business partner.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd there was Vinay Prasad, who served as director of the FDA\u2019s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, who roiled the pharmaceutical industry \u2014 and his own staff \u2014 with an abrasive leadership style and peremptory rejection of certain drug applications.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid innumerable battles, it was ultimately a fight over fruit-flavored vapes that ended Makary\u2019s tenure, after Trump had a \u201cfateful lunch\u201d with tobacco industry executives seeking approval for their products, an FDA official says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe White House was exerting pressure on the FDA to approve the products and Makary was resistant, given that such products would clearly appeal to kids. \u201cIt was the end of the rope for him,\u201d says a Makary associate. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to sign off on candy flavors.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut ultimately he did sign off, albeit too late to save his position. Trump thanked him on Tuesday in a social media post, writing, \u201cHe was a hard worker, who was respected by all, and will go on to have an outstanding career in Medicine.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tDiamantas has the job on a temporary basis for now, and anyone tapped to fill it permanently would need to sit for Senate confirmation hearings. One name that has emerged as a possible candidate is Admiral Brett Giroir, a pediatrician who served as the assistant secretary for health at HHS during the first Trump administration, and oversaw diagnostic testing during the Covid pandemic. Giroir, reached by Rolling Stone on Tuesday, declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s unclear if or when Trump will nominate someone, though, and there\u2019s no telling how long Diamantas could wind up overseeing the FDA on an acting basis. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve ever swallowed an aspirin, put milk in your coffee, fed your pet, or filled a prescription,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12081,75,26186,39845,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-69521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-trump-jr","8":"tag-controversy","9":"tag-donald-trump-jr","10":"tag-fda","11":"tag-kyle-diamantas","12":"tag-trump"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116567853114409445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}