VA Secretary Shulkin is out, Trump tweets
Power struggles, travel impropriety marred tenure
WASHINGTON – Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is being replaced, President Trump tweeted Wednesday, ending weeks of speculation and uncertainty about his fate.
Trump nominated Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, official physician for the president and his predecessor, Barack Obama, to be the next VA secretary.
“I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our great VETERANS!” the president tweeted.
He said Robert Wilkie, an undersecretary at the Pentagon, will take over the agency as acting secretary.
Shulkin had been locked for months
in a power struggle with a group of Trump political appointees among his senior staff.
Shulkin had pledged the VA would not be privatized on his watch but would provide veterans expanded opportunities to get private-sector care. The Trump appointees want a more comprehensive overhaul and to give veterans more access to VA-funded care in the private sector.
Trump praised the Cabinet secretary several weeks ago for doing a “great” and “incredible” job leading the charge to fulfill his pledges to improve the VA.
Shulkin himself provided the opening that led to his downfall. After touting Trump’s campaign pledges to increase accountability at the VA, he balked at the results of an investigation released last month that found he and his staff committed ethics violations in planning and taking a European trip last year.
He blasted the VA inspector general’s findings that he improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets and airfare for his wife during the 10-day junket. He refused to accept the determination that his chief of staff misled ethics officials to get clearance for his wife’s airfare, suggesting that her email had been hacked.
Shulkin later expressed regret and repaid the cost of the tickets and airfare. He also complained that the appointees were targeting and undermining him.
Two days after the report’s release, the White House unilaterally installed a new VA chief of staff, Peter O’Rourke, who was a member of Trump’s transition team and an ally of the Trump appointees.
VA spokesman Curt Cashour said “additional personnel accountability actions” were possible.
Shulkin made it roughly 13 months in Trump’s Cabinet.
He directed increased transparency efforts, including a new website revealing wait times for VA care and quality comparisons to the private sector. Shulkin also increased accountability, swiftly removing hospital directors when problems were revealed.
He fulfilled some of Trump’s campaign promises on veterans’ issues, overseeing the creation of a 24-hour White House hotline for veteran complaints and an Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Office, which drew praise for its early efforts.
Shulkin had been working with Congress to pass legislation that would expand — if moderately — veterans’ access to private sector care, and the measure was poised to pass the Senate before the power struggle between Shulkin and Trump appointees erupted into public view.