- Trump’s NIH director nominee, Jay Bhattacharya, made $11,995 from posting on X last year.
- It’s a relatively unique income source for a nominee for a top government job.
- He also made $457,743 as a Stanford professor and $25,772 from paid speeches.
One of President Donald Trump’s top health-related nominees has had a unique income source over the last two years: posting on social media.
Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee for Director of the National Institutes of Health, made $11,995 last year as part of X’s content creator revenue program, according to a financial disclosure filed earlier this month.
Under that program, instituted by Elon Musk after he took over the social media platform and renamed it from Twitter, users with a premium account can receive payouts based on engagement from other premium users.
Prior to Trump announcing his nomination in late November, Bhattacharya was a frequent poster on X, where he boasts more than 680,000 followers, and he joined the creator revenue program in 2023. According to his ethics agreement, Bhattacharya has “ceased creating content for compensation” and has “ceased sharing in revenue for content creation for X.”
Bhattacharya rose to prominence in 2020 as a critic of COVID-related lockdowns and was a coauthor of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which promoted a “herd immunity” strategy against the virus. In a statement for this story, White House spokesman Kush Desai said that Americans have “lost confidence in the medical apparatus that let us down during the COVID pandemic” and touted Bhattacharya as the “perfect pick” for the role.
“Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been a leading voice in support of greater transparency and efficacy in our healthcare bodies, and that’s exactly why he is the perfect pick to lead the NIH and help deliver on President Trump’s resounding mandate to Make America Healthy Again by restoring confidence, competence, and accountability in health care,” Desai said. “We look forward to his swift confirmation by the Senate.”
Bhattacharya’s main occupation isn’t posting on X: He also earned $457,743 last year as a professor at Stanford University.
He also made thousands of dollars from paid speeches, including $20,000 from the conservative Bradley Impact Fund in October, $3,500 from the Global Liberty Institute in July, and $2,272 from Hillsdale College in October.
Bhattacharya also owns thousands of dollars in stock in Walmart, NVIDIA, and Taiwan Semiconductor, which he has agreed to divest if confirmed.
Bhattacharya did not respond to a request for comment.
All of Trump’s nominees are required to file public financial disclosures, with recent filings revealing how Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director nominee Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made their money in recent years.
