There are many, many reprehensible aspects of the Trump presidency. In case we had forgotten or become too distracted by something perhaps more profound, such as a possible constitutional crisis created by a leader who threatens the rule of law because he doesn’t like being investigated, there is the mundane fact that this White House has displayed an incredible, incomparable, and almost inconceivable level of incompetence.
That’s not all. You see, this exploded Thanksgiving turkey of a Cabinet-level nomination is the fault of—and I’m gritting my teeth as I’m typing this—President Barack Obama. Follow me further, if you are willing, into the morass that is the Republican mind in the age of Trump.
To run the Department of Veterans Affairs—and don’t forget that Trump fired the previous secretary because he stood in the way of the plan to privatize the VA—the man who lost the popular vote selected White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson. Dr. Jackson has never run, well, anything. His primary qualification appears to have been that his most special patient really liked him—not at all because he pronounced that patient, an overweight man with some evidence of heart disease and who takes blood pressure medication, to be in “excellent” (he used that word eight times in one briefing) health and added: “he has incredibly good genes, and it’s just the way God made him.”
As we’ve learned in recent days, Dr. Jackson—whose other monikers apparently included “Dr. Feelgood” and “Candyman”—is as wrong as a physician as orange is for a skin color. Here’s the full story regarding the details of the not-so-good doctor’s misdeeds.
After the withdrawal of Jackson’s nomination, rather than say something like, “man, we really screwed this one up, didn’t we,” Trump blamed the person who stopped being president 15 months ago. And he wasn’t the only Republican running with that line of horse manure. You might be shaking your head in confusion at this point. However, you probably shouldn’t be surprised.
How in the world could it be Obama’s fault that Trump nominated Dr. Jackson to join his Cabinet? In order to understand it, you have to think like Trump. Here’s how you do that: first, remember that the truth is absolutely irrelevant. Then you find a connection between the mess you made—don’t worry that it bears little in relation to the matter at hand—and your political opponent, ideally Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but if not them, then some other prominent Democrat will do, and, failing that, just connect your failure to another person or group that will get your base seeing red, such as immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter activists, or whatever you can come up with. Then you go on Fox & Friends and bleat about it. Problem solved—or at least, solved in the minds of your supporters, i.e., people who only get their news from conservative media.
The “connection,” such as it is, between Trump’s failed nomination of Dr. Jackson and President Obama is that Dr. Jackson served as White House physician under Obama, who appointed him to that role in July 2013, and that he received praise, including directly from Obama, for his performance in that role.
Fox News and other right-wing media sources highlighted this praise, and in fact that was legitimately newsworthy, as a minor sideline to the much more important story of Jackson’s nomination to run the VA. How did Fox News get the documents showing Obama’s praise of Jackson? “A “senior White House official” spoke to its preferred Republican-controlled media outlet, i.e., Fox News. Doing so was part of a White House mission to “salvage” the nomination, at least until that became impossible.
Trump himself closed the loop on Thursday morning by going on Fox & Friends and reminding their audience that Dr. Jackson was “respected by President Obama, gave him his highest rating,” and added “you saw what President Obama said.” Of course we did. Your official put the information out there.
On that same Thursday edition of Fox & Friends, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch went even further in blaming Obama for the Jackson-Trump disaster:
At what point did [the Obama Administration] know about this concerning Ronnie Jackson? Apparently it wasn’t troubling or concerning enough for them to do anything about it when he was serving on staff for former President Barack Obama. But now suddenly, a new president is in the White House and they have to what? I guess make up for looking the other way all of this time.
I mean, that really reflects poorly on the character of the previous administration if only now they suddenly have an objection over this individual who served with the previous president. I think that’s what the bigger question is. This administration showed that if there’s a problem, they’re going to handle it
I still maintain that former President Obama didn’t have a problem with Ronnie Jackson so why should President Trump? Maybe Democrats can explain that one to us.
First, let’s note that Loesch makes abundantly clear that her position at the NRA requires her to speak not merely as a proponent for her organization’s position on guns but as a naked Republican partisan willing to defend Trump on any issue. Not a surprise, but worth noting. To return to our primary topic, here’s the thing: Obama didn’t nominate Ronny Jackson to a Cabinet post, one that would have put him in charge of almost 400,000 employees who provide medical care for more than 9 million veterans. Only Donald Trump did that.
Is it a ding on the Obama Administration’s record that Jackson served as White House physician? Sure. Of course, Trump kept him in that position as well, so both of them get that same ding. But could you imagine Obama nominating Jackson to run the VA without doing the more thorough vetting that brought forth a mountain of negative information about this man? All the Trump White House appeared to do was run a standard FBI background check before announcing Jackson as their pick.
This whole affair is pathetic. If you remember, on April 3, 2016, Trump put up a Facebook post in which he wrote that he would: “hire the best people.” To say that he has failed in that regard is an understatement of epic proportions. Beyond that—this is a president, a party, and, yes, a movement, that simply will never accept responsibility for their own stupidity. The buck never stops with any of them.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).