Brooke Rollins is scheduled to get her day before the Senate Ag Committee on Thursday as she prepares to be confirmed as President Trump’s secretary of Agriculture. Ray Starling is the general counsel for the North Carolina Chamber, and served as chief of staff to Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue under the previous Trump administration, and also served as Trump’s principal ag advisor. Starling has high praise for Rollins.
“Rollins is a superstar. She’s going to be absolutely fantastic. She grew up in Glen Rose, Texas, around agriculture. She was an avid FFA mentor member. She was an outstanding student leader at one of the country’s largest land grants, Texas A and M University. You do not become the student body president at Texas A and M by being a person that is not smart and is also not a good person, like in her heart, I mean, just a good person. She’s got four kids, so she cares about how to feed them and how to take care of them.”
Starling says Rollins is uniquely qualified to serve.
“Part of being the Secretary of Agriculture or of being any cabinet secretary is knowing how to navigate the relationships with other secretaries, and most importantly, the relationship with the President. Brooke has that she has been a part of the policy apparatus the America First policy institute has been its leader. So it tells you she’s got these management skills, she’s got this policy capability. But most importantly, she’s got the relationships so that if the ag community needs the president’s ear, Brooks going to be able to deliver on that.”
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, and that has raised eyebrows in farm country. Starling says Rollins will offer a counterpoint to RFK in the president’s cabinet.
“That’s one reason we need Brooke to be successful is to make sure that some of the alternative views, or alternate views are heard when it comes to some of our agriculture issues. We need to make sure that RFK understands that we’re not going to continue to feed people at 10 to 12% of their disposable income. If you take away our pesticides, you take away our genetic engineering, and frankly, if you take away our beloved processed food.”