Ronnie Jackson Withdraws From Consideration to Lead Veteran Affairs

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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6 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    I lost an internet bet on this one. I’m not surprised that a high ranking officer was (allegedly) a flaming a**hole, nor that a high ranking officer (allegedly) did some stuff that would have got a petty officer busted and kicked out. After all, the Fat Leonard stuff still hasn’t all been shook out.

    I am kinda surprised he was able to be (allegedly) a petty tyrant and gather some incident reports to his name while maintaining a job on the White House staff – and getting promoted a couple times on top of that. Who in the Obama administration was providing top cover for this guy? Former CIA director John Brennan liked the guy – in Doc Jackson’s current capacity. But Brennan also promoted Gina Haspel.

    (there’s an off chance that I may have met him once, as I was in school in Groton about the same time as he was, per his bio.)Report

    • Morat20 in reply to Kolohe says:

      I suspect that his position was a fairly isolated one, and also (barring emergencies) not exactly high priority environment.

      In short, the people supposed to be managing him likely rarely — if ever — interacted with him doing his job, and the job itself was low key enough (and again, no major health emergencies I’ve heard of) that brief scans of his work product wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows.

      He wouldn’t be the first guy that got away with crazy crap by simple dint of working far enough away from his bosses that it was easy to hide.

      Of course, once someone started looking, it all falls apart. But I think that, prior to that, no one looked. No one bothered to look, being the problem.Report

      • There is a lot of truth to what you say. And frankly, positions such as that of working in White House are valued specifically for the leeway and perks that come with it. Same is true in high commands, pentagon and other postings.Report

  2. Burt Likko says:

    Amazing how when the only qualification for a particular job is that the President personally has had some interactions with you that he found not unpleasant, the resulting candidates may not seem to third parties like particularly wonderful choices.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    It’s actually kind of amazing that the cabinet nomination process is still a complete cluster[of fish]. It takes a unique talent to actively squelch the ability to build any institutional knowledge.Report