TRUMP PEOPLE: “‘Everything he touches,’ Fred Trump once said of his son, ‘turns to gold.’ That was in 1973. Things are … a little different now. Ronny Jackson is only the latest to join the ever-growing scrap heap of the Trump administration—people who volunteered or were summoned to serve, only to find themselves discarded and disgraced. The Trump-adjacent damage ranges from blaring-siren legal woes (Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and poor-man’s-Roy-Cohn, fixer-attorney Michael Cohen) to reputational taint (Sean Spicer, Reince Preibus, Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, global-CEO-turned-spurned-Secretary-of-State Rex Tillerson) to unexpected political collapses (Luther Strange, Roy Moore, Rick Saccone) in which the president’s support proved to be less Midas touch and more kiss of death. Rear Adm. Jackson was the mostly anonymous White House physician. Now, largely as a result of Trump’s decision to put him forth to be to be secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs, he’s better known, fairly or not, as an ill-tempered, drunk-driving drug-dispensing ‘candy man.’ There’s always been a Trump World scrap heap—in particular during his moments of maximum stress and duress—but it’s never been like the past 15 months.”
–Michael Kruse, “Trump’s Ever-Mounting Scrap Heap,” Politico, April 26, 2018