Collins steers clear of Trump during interview

National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins mostly avoided talking about his boss, president Donald Trump, in a newspaper interview.

Collins is a rare holdover from former president Obama’s administration. He sat down with the Washington Examiner to talk about the White House’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2018.

Trump’s administration has proposed cutting the NIH’s funding by more than 20 percent, or nearly $8 billion dollars. “With a cut as was proposed in the president’s budget for fiscal year 2018, of approximately 20 percent, there would be no way to protect any part of [the NIH] from some kind of effect,” Collins said in the article, published on 17 July.