Rear Admiral Dr. Ronny Jackson withdrew from consideration as President Trump’s Veterans Affairs secretary on Thursday without ever getting a chance to publicly defend his reputation.
In a statement, Jackson said the allegations about his drinking and pill-pushing “are completely false and fabricated. If they had any merit I would not be selected and promoted to serve in the important role as physician to three presidents over 12 years.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on Thursday that Jackson’s withdrawal just shows how low some Democrats are willing to go:
“Well, I feel bad for Admiral Jackson, because you’re right, none of these accusations was ever proven to be true — and they were anonymously sourced and repeated by some Senate Democrats who were trashing his reputation,” Cornyn told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday.
“In the end, he may have just figured that it’s not worth it. But this is a guy who had gotten glowing performance evaluation reports by President Obama. And so it leads me to wonder whether we’re just chasing good people off with all this rumor and hearsay that’s never been proven. And it’s really a shame. It’s our loss.”
Host Brian Kilmeade asked Cornyn what it says about Sen. John Tester of Montana, that he’d “go on national television and parrot these allegations as if they’re facts?”
“I think it’s despicable, and he should be ashamed of himself,” Cornyn said.
Tester, a Democrat, is running for re-election in November.
In an earlier interview with “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, President Trump predicted that Tester will pay a “big price” for smearing Dr. Jackson.
“Because I don’t think people in Montana — the admiral is the kind of person that they respect and admire,” Trump said. “And they don’t like seeing what’s happened to him.”
Even MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” crew, a group that is nothing but hostile to all things Trump, wondered about the “over-the-top” smearing of Dr. Ronny Jackson on Thursday’s show.
Willie Geist said he’s been “amazed by the sheer number” of private communications from people who worked in the Obama administration, “messaging me and emailing me and saying — this guy, you know, yes, that he gave out some Ambien on flights, that’s normal. Maybe he had a couple of drinks after hours with people. But they, to a man, say he was a great doctor, a good man. President Obama wrote him four separate commendations, so they’re surprised to see this, and they’re suspicious of what you’re suspicious of, that somebody has some kind of agenda here to push him aside.”
Joe Scarborough said he doesn’t know if the effort to torpedo Jackson is coming out of the Pentagon or where it’s coming from. “I don’t think the man is qualified. So I’m not sitting here fighting for him to run the VA.”
“It just seems over the top,” Mika Brzezinski chimed in.
“But this seems over the top,” her fiance Scarborough agreed. “What this does do is the next time somebody who is qualified to run an agency like this, they’ll say wait a second, I’m going to have a lot of people trash me, say I’m a drunk, say I’m abusive, saying this, saying (that). You know what, they could have gone to one or two people that were angry with Ronny Jackson for some reason over the past 30 years who did that.”
(Courtesy of CNSNews.com)
