President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs is under scrutiny for defending controversial policies in his career as a Senate Republican aide, including pushing back on a resolution that called for equal pay for women and supporting an organization that wanted to incorporate the Confederate flag in its logo.
Robert Wilkie, a top Pentagon official, in the 1990s served as a staffer for former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who denounced Martin Luther King Jr. and described homosexuals as “weak, morally sick wretches,” per the Washington Post. In addition, he worked for former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and defended him in 2003 after he lost his leadership role for praising Strom Thurmond’s 1948 pro-segregation presidential campaign.
The Post also reported that as recently as 2005 Wilkie attended ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery and Capitol Hill that honored fallen Confederate soldiers. In addition, he was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which defends the public use of Confederate symbols. Maj. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said they were government-sanctioned events that commemorated Civil War veterans and that Wilkie stopped taking part when they became “part of the politics that divide us.”
After leaving Congress, Wilkie – an officer in the Air Force Reserve – served as assistant secretary of defense during President George W. Bush’s administration from 2005 to 2009, according to his biography from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Before his first stint at the Pentagon, he worked as the special assistant to the president for national security affairs and was a senior director of the National Security Council under former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
He is now Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
Wilkie declined the Post’s request for comment. But Gleason, the Pentagon spokeswoman, said his “record on the way he treats his employees, on equal rights, equal opportunity and employment stands for itself on this matter.”
Wilkie’s Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled to start Wednesday. He was nominated by Trump on May 18 to head the second largest federal agency after former White House physician Ronny Jackson withdrew his candidacy following allegations about being drunk on the job, over-prescribing pain medication, and creating a hostile work environment.
