President Donald Trump is expected to pick Sam Clovis, a conservative talk show host who campaigned for Trump in Iowa, for the position of “chief scientist” as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), reported ProPublica and the Washington Post this weekend.
“If the president goes forward with this nomination, it’ll be yet another example of blatant dismissal of the value of scientific expertise among his administration appointees.”
—Ricardo Salvador,
Union of Concerned ScientistsThe 2008 Farm Bill dictates that the USDA’s chief scientist be selected “from among distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics,” observed ProPublica. Yet Clovis has no science background to speak of.
“Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and has published almost no academic work—two bare-minimum requirements of any fledgling scientist,” Mashable noted.
Clovis is most well-known for his Iowa radio show “Impact with Sam Clovis” and a series of fiery TV ads in which he advocated for Trump during the 2016 election.
One of the Trump campaign’s first advisers, Clovis was also responsible for bringing Carter Page onto the Trump campaign team. Page later came under intelligence agency scrutiny for his close ties to Russian officials.
In addition, Clovis helped Trump come up with his “ban all Muslims” campaign promise, the Guardian reported back in 2015.
“If the president goes forward with this nomination, it’ll be yet another example of blatant dismissal of the value of scientific expertise among his administration appointees,” said Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), in a statement. “Continuing to choose politics over science will give farmers and consumers little confidence that the administration has their interests at heart.”
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