The Daily - The Allegations Against Ronny Jackson

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

The nomination of Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, President Trump’s personal doctor, as the next head of Veterans Affairs has come to an abrupt stop. Now, Congress is beginning to examine several alarming allegations from unidentified whistle-blowers that derailed the doctor’s Senate confirmation process. Guest: Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the nomination of President Trump's personal doctor as the next head of Veterans Affairs had come to an abrupt stop. Now, Congress is describing the alarming allegations from unnamed whistleblowers that derailed the doctor's nomination. It's Wednesday, April 25th.

This was the week that Dr. Ronnie Jackson, who currently serves at the White House as the president's personal physician, Ronnie Jackson, who currently serves at the White House as the president's personal physician, he was supposed to come to Capitol Hill to be vetted and interviewed by members of Congress to run one of the largest bureaucracies in the federal government, the Veterans Affairs Department. Mike Scheer covers the White House for The Times. This is a fellow, Ronnie Jackson, who hasn't gotten any serious management experience, not somebody who has been in charge of huge numbers of staff, not somebody that's been in charge of a large budget. And so there were always going to be questions from Democrats, for sure,

but also from Republicans as to is this the right person to lead not only one of the biggest agencies, but one of the most troubled. Well, another VA scandal is brewing this time at the Philadelphia office. There is a scathing new report about care problems at Veterans Affairs facilities across the country. It is no stretch to say the Department of Veterans Affairs has a trust problem. You know, Veterans Affairs has struggled for years under scandal. And as many as 40 veterans died while they were waiting for medical care at this VA facility.

New fallout in the Veterans Affairs scandal. The top official in charge of medical care for our vets is resigning. But also just general kind of mismanagement and a sense that this is an agency that doesn't operate well. You can't fix the VA. No amount of money is going to fix the VA. And I hate to be so grim. And so, you know, members of Congress, I think,

had the idea that they were going to grill Dr. Jackson on what is it that you bring, other than a friendship with the president and an affinity with the president, what is it that you bring to the job that can address some of these really chronic problems at the VA. And how did it come to be that this controversial nomination was made in the first place? What happened to the previous head of the Veterans Affairs Department?

So the previous head had been an Obama holdover. He was ousted after a kind of long period of will he or won't he go? And I think there was an expectation that in the wake of that, President Trump would turn to somebody with either really deep credentials in the veterans community or somebody who had a lot of experience, for example, in business. That's something that Trump obviously values. Breaking news from the White House tonight. President Trump late today fired his Secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin. Instead, in an abrupt moment that no one saw coming.

The big surprise was not Shulkin's ouster, which had been rumored for weeks. It was who he's nominating to replace him as personal physician, Rear Admiral Dr. Ronnie Jackson. The president just said, nope, I want Ronnie Jackson, my doctor. A Navy rear admiral, he has a surprise choice to lead the government's second largest department. He has served as White House physician over the past three administrations. Recently, Jackson has been criticized by some after giving a glowing report on the president's health. Here was a guy who had stood up on television and really defended him and gave him a positive, rave review. Some people have just great genes.

I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. I don't know. I mean, he has incredible genes, I just assume. I mean, you know, if I didn't watch what I ate, I wouldn't have the cardiac and overall health that he has. So that's it, guys. That's all the questions I've taken. Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it. See you next year. Thank you very much. That's how he came to be the nominee for the Veterans Department. Okay, so despite the fact that he doesn't have a ton of experience, Dr. Jackson is nominated for this job and is preparing for this hearing that's supposed to be on Wednesday morning before the Senate committee that will judge whether he can take this job. And my understanding is that generally the Senate defers to the president when it comes to nominations like this.

So isn't the assumption that this will occur and that he will probably get the job? I think at the start of this week, most people were betting that despite the concerns over his lack of qualifications, that the Senate would likely defer, that there would be a series of tough questions. And at the end of the day, there is that kind of deference where the Senate says, look, the president has a right to put the people that he wants in charge of a department like this. And if this is the guy he wants, then we're going to give it to him. So what changed? if this is the guy he wants, then we're going to give it to him. So what changed?

Well, what changed was a series of whistleblowers that came to members of Congress to make a series of allegations about Dr. Jackson that really didn't have much to do with this question of professional experience and management of a big department, but rather had to do with his actions as the White House physician. And they generally broke down into three areas. Allegations that he fostered a hostile work environment as the head of the White House medical office. The second was that he was seen drinking and or drunk at times that would have been inappropriate for that to be the case. drinking and or drunk at times that would have been inappropriate for that to be the case. And then third was that he had been involved in inappropriately dispensing prescription medications to members of the White House staff for whom he was the doctor, that he was too loose in prescribing those medications.

Those are serious allegations. They are. And what really triggered the reporting was when, on a bipartisan basis, the leadership of the committee that was to hold the hearings announced that the hearings would be delayed indefinitely. And, of course, when something like that happens, they have to give an explanation. Why suddenly would this hearing be put off? And the reasons given were the ones that I just described, the sort of allegations that had been brought forward by whistleblowers. And that's kind of where we were Tuesday afternoon. So how has President Trump responded, especially given what you've described as a strong relationship with Dr. Jackson?

Thank you very much. Tuesday afternoon, the president was asked about all of these swirling controversies. It was at the White House. It's in the East Room. Melania and I are truly honored to welcome French President Macron, Mrs. Macron, to the White House. Thank you very much. Mrs. Macron to the White House. Thank you very much. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, is in the United States for a series of meetings with the president.

And as part of that, the two leaders held a press conference and a bunch of topics asked about foreign policy. And then one of the American reporters asked the president. Your nominee to run the Veterans Affairs Administration, Dr. Ronnie Jackson, has run into some serious political headwinds on Capitol Hill with some serious allegations being leveled at him. What about Dr. Jackson and all of these issues swirling around him? And I think we'd all expected to have a real forceful expression of support by the president for Dr. Jackson. And in some ways he did. He said. But I will tell you, he's one of the finest people that I have met. One of the finest men I've ever known. Also, he's been the doctor for President Obama, I believe for President Bush.

But then he sort of did something that surprised all of us, which is to sort of say that. We'll see what happens. I don't want to put a man through who's not a political person. I don't want to put a man through a process like this. It's too ugly and too disgusting. You know, if he were Dr. Jackson, he might just hang it up and not accept all of this abuse and drop out of contention. He said he had talked to Dr. Jackson on the phone

and told him that, that it was up to him and that if he wanted to continue to fight this thing through, that President Trump would support him in that. But he repeatedly said. But the fact is, I wouldn't do it. If I was him, I don't think I would do it. I wouldn't take this abuse. To be abused by a bunch of politicians that aren't thinking nicely about our country, I really don't think personally he should do it, but it's totally his. I would stand behind him.

Totally his decision. By the end of the press conference, it was sort of left unclear whether the president seemed to be hinting or suggesting that maybe this is what he thought should happen. But White House officials said later, look, you just should take the president on face value that he said it's up to Dr. Jackson whether to march forward.

And that's what he meant. I mentioned at the top of the show, there is some new breaking news tonight about the president's nominee to lead the VA, White House physician Ronnie Jackson. The president is picked to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Admiral Ronnie Jackson is in trouble. Senator John Tester is leading a push to try to look into the conduct of Admiral Jackson while he was at the White House serving as the White House physician. And late today, the ranking Democrat in the Veteran Affairs Committee, John Tester of Montana, addressed the allegations on NPR.

By Tuesday evening, at the sort of height of the controversy, we got more details. Do you know what drugs were dispensed? Yeah, I can't tell you exactly the name because I'm not a pharmacist. Senator John Tester, who is a Democrat from Montana and the top Democrat on the committee that is taking a look at whether or not to confirm Dr. Jackson for the position, went on the record Tuesday evening and really gave us some pretty amazing details in all three areas. So 20-some people who got a hold of us and said, we've got a problem. This doctor has a problem.

There was a report done in 2012 that was a review of the medical office at the White House, of which Dr. Jackson was a part. And the review that was done by the Navy Inspector General's office concluded that there had been terrible morale, that Dr. Jackson had essentially been in a battle for control of the office with the other top official there. And that we were told time and time again, again the people above him he treated like gold, the people below him he belittled, screamed at them. Subordinates in the office felt like they were trapped in the middle of this battle. Where the people that worked around him felt like they had to walk on eggshells.

And then in the area of accusations of being drunk, Senator Tester said that there had been multiple allegations that he appeared at the White House drunk and that on one occasion on a White House trip, this is during President Obama's administration, that when officials went to find Dr. and found him inebriated, passed out, and could not revive him to the point that they had to take his medical equipment and bring the equipment to another doctor so that that other doctor could help the patient. That seems like the ultimate dereliction of duty in terms of what's expected of the White House physician. Absolutely. And in fact, I think the remarkable details of that story is what underscores and helps to explain why the senators took these allegations so seriously, right?

Earlier in the week, when the allegations were more vague, it was a little harder to understand why this had become such an issue so quickly. I think when you hear those details about the chief White House doctor kind of unable to do his duties when called upon for reasons of being so drunk that they couldn't rouse him, assuming that that's true, those are just allegations, but that's why everybody was taking this so seriously. If you're drunk and something happens with the president, it's very difficult to go in and treat the president

as it needs to be done. So this is totally unacceptable under this environment. And Mike, what about this third area of concern, Dr. Jackson's distribution of prescription drugs? The word is, is that on overseas trips in particular, that Admiral would go down the aisleway of the airplane and say, all right, who wants to go to sleep? Right, so the concern there, according to Senator Tester, is specifically that Dr. Jackson and other

members of his medical staff would routinely distribute a couple of different drugs to White House staff, members of the press, and others on Air Force One on long trips. Like an Ambien type. Yeah, that's exactly right. And what he would distribute would be Ambien, which is a sleeping aid. A lot of these trips are 10, 12, 14 hours long. So he would distribute Ambien for people to help them sleep on the long flights. And then he would distribute a prescription drug called Provigil, which promotes wakefulness. So when they landed, the White House officials would get this drug to help them stay awake and essentially get on the correct time for the country that they were landing in. Those are drugs that if regular

people wanted to get them, they'd have to go to a doctor, they'd get a prescription, they'd take the prescription to a pharmacy and have that filled in the sort of standard way. Dr. Jackson, Senator Tester said, was simply had little packages of them and would hand them out to people who said they wanted them. So he would actually just go down the aisle and sort of say, that's correct. Sounds like whoever wanted them. Whoever wanted them. Now, to be fair to Dr. Jackson, it is quite true that he was not the first White House doctor to do this. This is a practice that has been done by prior White House doctors going back many years. It's also a practice on State Department flights,

Defense Department flights that take, you know, many, many hours. But, you know, again, for members of the Senate who were considering whether or not to put Dr. Jackson in charge of, you know, not only one of the largest bureaucracies, but also the largest health care system in the country, the VA health care system, which, you know, manages the medical care of the nation's veterans. You know, to the senators, this question of whether or not he was willing to be distributing these drugs without a

prescription was very concerning to them. I do want to flag one thing. It sounds like Dr. Jackson's most egregious moment occurred under President Obama. And yet I have read that President Obama also spoke highly of the doctor and kept him on, obviously, through the end of his two terms as president, and then he went on to serve President Trump. So I wonder if there's a kind of broader sense of affinity for this doctor that has allowed him to stay in this job, despite what we're now hearing. You know what? It's actually one of the most confusing and intriguing aspects of all of this. I talked to a number of former Obama administration officials, especially after the details emerged that Senator Tester had offered, and none of them said that they recognized any of this behavior. gave glowing reviews to Dr. Jackson about his performance at the White House as the chief doctor, even recommending Dr. Jackson for a promotion to admiral.

And so it's very hard to square those two things, I think. Well, what do we know about the whistleblowers who are making these really serious claims? Do we know anything about who they are? Not much. I mean, look, that's the definition of a whistleblower is that they come forward anonymously to, and in this case, to members of Congress to offer information and concerns. And so at the moment, what we have really is the information directly from the lawmakers in both parties, mind you, and their staffs describing what the whistleblowers have brought forward. Got it.

what the whistleblowers have brought forward. Got it. You know, listening to you talk, I'm struck that in some way, these particular allegations are more alarming when considering this person as the president's doctor than when considering him as the head of the Veterans Affairs Department. I mean, I think that's true in a sense.

I do think that the fact that the head of the VA also is the head of this big hospital system, I do think there's be a lot of lingering concern about, well, is he the right person to be attending to the president's health? That's certainly not what President Trump would have liked to think that he set in motion by doing this. But I don't know that there's going to be a way for him to avoid it. I mean, again, you know, you could imagine the political process of the nomination coming to a close, and there's still being a cloud now over Dr. Jackson about whether he can continue in that job in the Navy. It sounds like you're saying that by nominating his favorite doctor, his White House physician, to be the head of the VA, the president

may have unintentionally disqualified that doctor from continuing in his role as a White House physician. I mean, I think that might be the result in the end. Thank you, Michael. Sure, happy to do it. The Times is reporting that as allegations against Dr. Jackson intensified on Tuesday, the White House became more aggressive in its defense of the doctor. The president and Dr. Jackson met face-to-face on Tuesday evening, and the White House released a statement

calling the doctor's record, quote, impeccable, and saying he would not be railroaded by false accusations. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that moments before he used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto on Monday, Alec Manassian posted a hostile message toward women on Facebook. In the message, Manassian praised Elliot Rodger, who in 2014 carried out a mass shooting after posting a video

describing his own rage toward women for rejecting him. All hail Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger, Manassian wrote. Classmates said Manassian displayed extreme social awkwardness and had once said, quote, I am afraid of girls. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.