DOCKED FOR DOC
Donald fires VA secretary, gives job to his physician
PRESIDENT TRUMP announced the firing of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin over Twitter on Wednesday, and replaced with him his personal physician.
Trump named longtime White House physician Ronny Jackson — who’s also a rear admiral — to fill the scandal-scarred Shulkin’s post.
Senior Defense Department official Robert Wilkie will serve as the acting secretary in the interim.
Jackson, 50, recently made headlines after he revealed that Trump’s first presidential physical exam put him just one pound shy of obesity. Trump has told aides he was impressed with how Jackson handled the press conference, The Washington Post reported, and that’s apparently one of the reasons he was chosen for the job.
“As a service member himself, he has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them,” Trump said in a statement.
Shulkin had been the first nonveteran to head the agency.
A White House aide said Chief of Staff John Kelly informed Shulkin of his dismissal shortly before the tweet. In addition to announcing Shulkin was being replaced, Trump’s tweet commended him on his “service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!”
But those rosy words sharply contrasted reports that Trump was furious with Shulkin after the VA’s inspector general revealed last month that he had lied about the nature of a taxpayer-funded trip his wife took to Europe last summer.
Shulkin, 58, agreed to reimburse the government more than $4,000 after the VA watchdog also found that he had improperly accepted Wimbledon tennis tickets and that his then-chief of staff had doctored emails to justify his wife’s trip.
Trump similarly pushed out Health and Human Services Tom Price after it was revealed last fall that he had spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private airfare.
Jackson, an Obama appointee, immediately faced skepticism from veterans advocates who feared that his lack of management experience could inhibit him from effectively leading the government’s second-largest department.
“We are disappointed and already quite concerned about this nominee,” said Joe Chenelly, the national executive director of AMVETS. “The administration needs to be ready to prove that he’s qualified to run such a massive agency.”
Jackson is best known for saying Trump is in “excellent” health, even though he said the commander-in-chief is one pound from obesity and could benefit from eating better.
“If I didn’t watch what I eat, I wouldn’t have the cardiac and overall health that he has. He’s very healthy despite that he does those things,” Jackson said during a press conference in January.