At a speech in early November, President-elect Donald Trump exclaimed, “I love dogs! We love dogs!”
He may not own a pet, but during Trump’s first tenure in the White House, White Coat Waste Project made historic progress to slash over $20 billion in wasteful government spending on animal testing. With Trump’s re-election, we’re poised to save even more tax dollars and puppies.
On Nov. 15, 2016, The Washington Post (which later turned on us when we uncovered Fauci’s beagle tests and Wuhan lab funding) wrote that WCW has, “a message that could resonate following the election of Donald Trump, who has made government waste a talking point.” The Post gets a lot wrong, but on this point, they were spot-on.
Perhaps Trump’s most legendary blow against animal testing came in April 2020 – just days after a WCW investigation first exposed how Fauci’s National Institute of Health (NIH) division bankrolled the Wuhan lab. Following our exposé, the president personally took to the airwaves and summarily slashed the EcoHealth Alliance’s grant, calling it “tremendous waste.” Most Americans now agree that these gain-of-function experiments on humanized mice almost certainly caused a lab leak and COVID.
This wasn’t the Trump Administration’s only victory against bureaucrats who butcher beagles, bunnies and other animals.
Following another WCW investigation, Trump’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief shut down absurd $5.5 million nicotine addiction tests on baby monkeys, retired the primates to a sanctuary and enacted the government’s first-ever agency-wide lab animal retirement policy.
Trump’s Department of Agriculture also shuttered the government’s largest cat laboratory. Our organization exposed how the USDA wasted $22 million on a boondoggle where the agency bought dog and cat meat at Chinese wet markets, flew the pet parts home in carry-on luggage and force-fed it to kittens inside a Beltway lab. Over 5,000 animals perished in USDA’s “Kitten Slaughterhouse.” I adopted two cats that were liberated from this decades-old program, so I’m especially grateful Trump finally shut it down.
With support from WCW allies including Lara Trump, President Trump’s first Veterans Affairs Secretary put the ball in motion to end dog and cat testing at the agency. We’ve since completely eliminated the tests despite the Biden Administration’s best efforts to keep them going.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Andrew Wheeler unveiled a landmark plan to completely end testing on dogs, rabbits and other mammals by 2035 and retire lab animals. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration killed the concept to cut animal tests soon after they took power in 2021, much to the chagrin of Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
There are other good reasons why we’re bullish on even more progress to protect puppies and beat bureaucrats during Trump’s second term.
Donald Trump, Jr and Eric Trump are among the millions of enthusiastic supporters of our ongoing BeagleGate campaign to defund the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) painful dog and cat testing in the U.S. and China funded by Dr. Fauci and others.
Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) President and General Counsel. called Fauci’s beagle abuse exposed by WCW “inhumane and heartless.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for Dr. Fauci to be prosecuted and for the dangerous gain-of-function experiments to end, something the WCW has been advocating for since 2021.
Elon Musk also opposes gain-of-function experiments and wants Fauci prosecuted for his role in funding the Wuhan lab and the subsequent cover-up. Most recently, a day after WCW exposed evidence of how Fauci and the NIH lied to the public and press about funding beagle torture in Tunisia, Musk posted a photo of Fauci with the text, “You’re all beagles to me anyway.” Musk has also helped amplify another WCW investigation of Fauci’s dangerous virus experiments on bats, many of which are ongoing.
On top of folks who might help drive policy in the Trump White House, Senators like Rand Paul, Joni Ernst and Eric Schmitt will now have the gavel in the upper chamber and advantage to crack down on wasteful and dangerous government animal tests at home and abroad funded by the NIH, FDA, Department of Defense and other agencies. Trump allies and longtime WCW allies like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Nancy Mace, Elise Stefanik, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Waltz and Nicole Malliotakis will once again be calling shots in the House.
Vivek Ramaswamy, another Trump ally, tweeted Nov. 4, “Animal cruelty will eventually become a genuine concern for conservatives. It’s already happening. Count me in.” He’s right. Recent polls show 85 percent of Republican taxpayers — as well as Democrats and Independents — oppose government animal tests and prefer lawmakers working to cut them.
President Trump and his team know from experience that cutting wasteful government spending on animal testing is a win-win and that it unifies taxpayers across the political spectrum. Let’s hope Trump takes every opportunity to make America great for animals this time around, too.
Anthony Bellotti is the founder and president of White Coat Waste Project. Bellotti previously worked as a strategist on Republican candidate and issue campaigns and was executive director of the American Association of Political Consultants.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
