Since the beginning of his Presidential campaign, in 2015, Donald Trump has claimed that helping America’s military veterans is one of his highest priorities. “We will take care of our great veterans like they have never been taken care of before,” he said, at the Republican National Convention, in 2016. Last August, he claimed that his Administration was following through on his promise. “You see what’s been happening,” he told the national convention of the American Legion. “Now you have a true reformer in [Veterans Affairs] Secretary David Shulkin. He’s done an incredible job.”
Shulkin, a seasoned medical administrator who used to run New York’s Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, had done such incredible work that, last month, Trump decided to fire him, and replace him with his White House physician, Ronny Jackson, a U.S. Navy medic who has no experience running a large organization but does have experience giving the President a glowing medical report. Ostensibly, the reason that Trump got rid of Shulkin was because he became embroiled in a scandal after using public money to take his wife with him on a trip to Europe. But, as I pointed out at the time, the back story was that Trump got played by a group of conservative insiders who were annoyed at Shulkin’s resistance to the privatization agenda that right-wing think tanks and Republican donors have been pushing for years.
In any case, the nomination of Jackson was a time bomb, which detonated this week just as Trump was preparing to welcome Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, to the White House for a state visit. On Monday, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs decided to postpone Jackson’s confirmation hearing, which was supposed to take place on Wednesday, so that members could review what a report in Politico referred to as “negative information” about the nominee.
The nature of that information emerged on Tuesday, as Trump and Macron were swapping handshakes and hugs. Senator Jon Tester, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said that former colleagues of Jackson’s had claimed that he drank to excess, handed out drugs liberally, and created a hostile working environment. “Some of the exact words that were used by the folks who we talked to were: abusive towards staff; very explosive personality; belittles the folks underneath him, the staff he oversaw; screamed toward staff,” Tester said. The former staffers had also claimed that Jackson was “repeatedly drunk” during work trips, the senator added. “And in the previous Administration we were told stories where he was repeatedly drunk while on duty where his main job was to take care of the most powerful man in the world. That’s not acceptable.”
The White House initially defended Jackson, pointing out in a statement released on Monday evening that he had “served as physician to three Presidents—Republican and Democrat—and been praised by them all.” However, at a news conference with Macron on Tuesday at lunchtime, Trump appeared to suggest that his nominee should withdraw, saying, “I don’t want to put a man through a process like this.” Jackson, who holds the rank of admiral in the U.S. Navy, wasn’t willing to go quietly, though. He told reporters that he wanted to go ahead with his confirmation hearing, and, later in the afternoon, he met with Trump. After that meeting, the White House issued another statement, supporting Jackson, and it also provided reporters a copy of a handwritten note from President Barack Obama, from 2016, which said, “Ronny does a great job—genuine enthusiasm, poised under pressure, incredible work ethic and follow through.”
Jackson surely deserves the opportunity to respond to the allegations against him, which, at this stage, come from anonymous sources. On Tuesday, some former Obama Administration officials came to his defense, particularly on the charge of abusing alcohol. David Axelrod, Obama’s former senior adviser, told the Times that Jackson “always seemed to be alert, responsive, responsible. . . . I never heard any complaints.” Brian McKeon, who served as chief of staff for Obama’s National Security Council, said that he didn’t recall Jackson ever drinking to excess. “I am not even sure that I ever saw him in a hotel bar,” McKeon said in an e-mail to the Times.
Evidently, this story will run for a bit. But whatever comes of the allegations against Jackson, there is virtually nothing to suggest that he is a suitable choice to run a complex and vital federal department that employs more than three hundred and fifty thousand people, has an annual budget of close to two hundred billion dollars, and has a history of deep problems. Even Trump, during his press conference on Tuesday, conceded, of his nominee, “I know there’s an experience problem, because lack of experience.” And now Jackson’s ability to run even a small organization, the White House medical team, has been called into question.
Jackson is the one under assault. But the entire episode is another indictment of Trump, and of the cavalier and narcissistic fashion in which he approaches the Presidency. Clearly, Trump didn’t bother to order any proper background checks before nominating Jackson. It was enough that the physician was a member of the armed services and had informed the world that—contrary to appearances and the judgment of outside medical experts—Trump is in excellent physical and mental shape.
If the President or his staff had carried out even a cursory check, they would have discovered a 2012 inspector general’s report, which, according to the Associated Press, concluded that Jackson had acted unprofessionally during a power dispute with another White House physician and recommended the removal of one or both men. (The other doctor lost his job.) Again, the details of what happened are murky. In any properly functioning White House, however, the existence of the report would have sounded an alarm.
This is Trump’s White House, an institution to which the words “properly functioning” are as alien as quiet days. From the very beginning of his tenure, Trump has nominated a series of people to Cabinet posts who have virtually no expertise in their areas of responsibility (Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson) or who have skeletons in their closet (Andy Puzder). At the Department of Veterans Affairs, Trump actually appointed somebody able, Shulkin, but then fired him, while sticking by corrupt appointees like Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency.
It’s another Trump shambles, but the real victims are the nation’s nine million veterans, many of whom depend on the V.A. for health care and other essential services. As Trump and his French guests sat down to a fancy state dinner on Tuesday night, the agency was rudderless and leaderless. It seems likely to stay that way for some time.
