'Long live the swamp': Firestorm as Trump FDA guts rule that kept flavored vapes from kids

Critics across the political spectrum erupted Sunday after the Trump administration's stunning move to clear a path for major tobacco companies to flood gas stations and convenience stores with flavored e-cigarettes — a policy shift that benefits some of President Donald Trump's most reliable donors.

The Food and Drug Administration's Friday guidance, issued without public comment or rule-making, drew immediate outrage from public-health advocates and political commentators who framed the move as a straightforward payoff to tobacco giants Reynolds American and Altria, both of which have donated heavily to Trump's MAGA Inc. PAC and pet projects, including his planned White House ballroom.

MSNBC contributor Molly Jong-Fast reacted with three blunt words: "Bad bad bad."

Brian Thompson, a former NBC New York journalist, tied the move directly to Trump's broken promise to "drain the swamp," writing: "So good to know the Swamp still lives. 'Long Live the Swamp!'"

Political journalist Nick Field zeroed in on the contradiction with Trump's "Make America Healthy Again" branding, asking simply: "Make America Healthy Again?" The MAHA initiative, championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pitched itself as a crusade against industry capture of federal health agencies.

Dr. Joseph Marine, an arrhythmia cardiologist in Baltimore, offered a sharper substantive critique, suggesting the FDA's tobacco regulatory framework had been so gutted it might as well be replaced "with two words: caveat emptor," Latin for "let the buyer beware."

Former U.S. Senate investigator Paul D. Thacker and writer Logan McMillen also flagged the policy as a corporate giveaway, with McMillen noting the absurdity of a government that "enfranchises" tobacco interests while criminalizing milder stimulants.

The reactions come amid mounting reporting that ties the policy shift to lobbying pressure from a tobacco firm that employed White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles before she joined the administration — and where her daughter works today