In-town pool #3: Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins at the sticks

Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins came and spoke with reporters after a Fox Business hit. She answered a few questions about The Atlantic's reporting, bird flu and probationary employees.

On the Signal chat and confidence in her colleagues:

"President Trump has utmost confidence in my colleagues in the cabinet, I think that the pace at which we are winning on issues that the people of America voted on is absolutely unprecedented. There is no doubt that my friends, my colleagues, my family that are part of this cabinet are the best, most patriotic, most impressive Americans I've ever been around."

HHS Sec. Kennedy said poultry vaccines could lead to mutant factories:

"As we are investing resources into figuring out how to solve this Avian Bird flu, which has been absolutely a disaster for our poultry industry — our egg layers, especially — but we can't just make the decision on what that looks like, just us over at the USDA building."

On the firing of probationary employees:

"The entire cabinet is aligned, is supportive and understands the President's vision that is being effectuated by Elon Musk and in partnership with all of the agencies."

"As we continue forward, we map those plans out. This will perhaps only be a couple more months — two, three, four months — while we're looking at what that realignment and reduction in force looks like, and then we begin the rebuild."

Because of onshoring, "the private sector is about to explode with new jobs and new opportunities in those areas. And so the opportunity for those who did work for government to now perhaps move into more productive opportunities for themselves, for their families, for their jobs and for this country, I believe, will be unprecedented."

Otter link: https://otter.ai/u/GWCviuTrVZ8EcH0HnL4FJPQ52LE?utm_source=copy_url

Apologies for the delay, I had this all ready to go and the email disappeared so I had to re-transcribe.

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Shira Stein

Washington correspondent

The San Francisco Chronicle

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