President Obama didn’t ask his VA secretary to resign. Instead, after meeting with Secretary Eric Shinseki, Obama addressed the press and praised the embattled cabinet member:
“Ric Shinseki has been a great soldier. He himself is a disabled veteran, and nobody cares more about our veterans than Ric Shinseki. So if you ask me how do I think Ric Shinseki has performed overall? I would say that on homelessness, on 9/11 GI bill, on working with us to reduce the backlog across the board he has put his heart and soul into this thing and he has taken it very seriously,” said Obama.
“But I have said to Ric [Shinseki] and I said it to him today, I want to see what the results of these reports are, and there is going to be accountability. And I’m going to expect even before the reports are done that we are seeing significant improvement in terms of how the admissions process takes place in all of our VA health care facilities. So I now he cares about it deeply. And he has been a great public servant and a great warrior on behalf of the United States of America.”
