3/30/2018

DAVID SHULKIN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE/VA: “Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin isn’t going anywhere. In the hours since President Donald Trump fired Shulkin, announcing in a signature tweet that he planned to replace him with White House physician Ronny Jackson, the former secretary has waged a scorched earth campaign, sitting for a slew of TV interviews and penning a blistering New York Times op-ed in which he described the environment in Washington as so ‘toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive that it became impossible’ for him to do his job. To hear Shulkin tell it, he was forced out of the White House amid a bitter policy dispute that hits right at the core of the agency’s mission: how to best care for the more than 9 million veterans who receive healthcare from VA. The inspector general report that faulted him and senior VA staffers for the handling of a summer trip to Europe? Just noise. Since the President announced on Wednesday that he was firing Shulkin — a move that had been expected for weeks — Shulkin has spoken with CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and the PBS NewsHour, a highly unusual move for a departing cabinet secretary.”

-Juana Summers, “David Shulkin wants to tell his side of the story — and he’s doing it everywhere,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Mar. 30, 2018, 4:52pm