Why FDA Commissioner Makary is on the ropes after months of turmoil
What this video covers
Recorded days before Makary’s resignation became public, this PBS NewsHour segment examines reporting that President Trump was preparing to fire the FDA Commissioner after what the program describes as a tumultuous tenure. Anchor Stephanie Sy interviews Liz Whyte, a health policy reporter at the Wall Street Journal, to unpack how Makary — confirmed barely a year earlier as a reform-minded outsider — wound up politically isolated.
Whyte’s reporting supplies the specific grievances, per the WSJ: that Trump grew “quite frustrated” over the weekend that Makary was slow-walking the flavored-vape agenda (Trump had pledged to “save vaping”), and that days later the FDA approved blueberry and mango vapes “for the first time in years”; that White House officials increasingly saw Makary as “a rogue agent… marching to the beat of his own drum,” relying on a small inner circle and clashing with HHS; and that even RFK Jr. had once considered reducing Makary to a figurehead while installing someone else to run the agency day-to-day, then backed off. On industry, the segment reports smaller biotechs’ fury over what they saw as regulatory U-turns — green lights followed by surprise rejections that cost them heavily — and accusations that accelerated-trial policies were pushing clinical work to China. It also names Makary’s hire Vinay Prasad, who had been brought in to run the vaccines division and was already gone.
On mifepristone, Whyte reports Makary promised a safety review but told insiders he needed a new data system that wouldn’t be ready until late 2026 or early 2027 — a timeline anti-abortion advocates rejected — and that his approval of a generic mifepristone, which he told the Journal he could have slow-walked but didn’t, further enraged those groups. Whyte’s bottom line: Trump had signed off on a plan to fire him.
Four days after this segment aired, Makary resigned on May 12, 2026. The segment therefore captures the final collapse of Makary’s standing in real time, before the official exit — this is the critic’s-side lens on Makary’s downfall, and should be read alongside his defenders’ version.
Key points
- PBS NewsHour’s Stephanie Sy frames the segment around reporting that Trump was set to fire Makary, treating the reports as credible and his tenure as “tumultuous.”
- Wall Street Journal reporter Liz Whyte provides the insider context on why the White House had reportedly lost confidence in the commissioner.
- The segment reflects the newsroom view that Makary’s reformist agenda had generated more instability than results, in contrast to the celebratory tone of his allies’ farewell coverage.
- It aired May 8, 2026 — four days before the May 12 resignation announcement, making it a snapshot of the final crisis.
- Viewers should weigh this segment against Makary’s defenders, who argued he was pushed out for resisting politically driven approvals rather than for mismanagement.