The most surprising element of White House physician Ronny Jackson’s tumultuous Tuesday is that he did not withdraw his nomination to run the Veterans Affairs department. That was the word out of a late afternoon meeting Jackson had with President Trump after news outlets reported on details of allegations of wrongdoing and poor judgment, including an inspector general report from 2015 that suggested removing the Navy officer from his White House post. Even later on Tuesday, new accusations about excessive drinking and over-prescribing pills to White House staff dogged Jackson. His Wednesday Senate confirmation hearing had been postponed as Senate Democrats called for more answers about Jackson’s past conduct.
Asked about the allegations during his joint press conference with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump defended Jackson as “one of the finest people that I have met” before suggesting Jackson ought to withdraw. “I told Admiral Jackson just a little while ago, I said, ‘What do you need this for?’” he said, referring to the accusations. “This is a vicious group of people that malign, and they do. And I’ve lived through it; we all lived through it. You people are getting record ratings because of it, so congratulations. But I said, ‘What do you need it for?’ He’s an admiral. He’s a great leader. And they questioned him about every little thing.”
But as others have reported, it isn’t strictly the media and Democrats who have been raising the alarm about Jackson, who the president nominated to replace David Shulkin at the VA. Republicans are concerned, too. “Jackson was chosen with little vetting, angering several White House aides, including chief of staff John Kelly,” Politico reports, adding that some “White House insiders” have speculated that leaks about the allegations against Jackson may have come from frustrated Trump aides. And GOP senators were left flat-footed, with no guidance from the White House, about how to address these questions.
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One More Thing—The Jackson episode underscores the slapdash manner in which Trump makes these sorts of personnel decisions, without sufficient vetting and before his team or the appointees themselves are prepared. John Kelly, for example, was unaware he had been tapped for the chief of staff job last July until Trump had announced it via Twitter.
President Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron disagree on whether the United States should pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which has been on life support since Trump first “decertified” it last fall. Rather than try to change Trump’s mind about exiting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, however, Macron on Tuesday signaled a different strategy: trying to get Trump on board with a new and improved plan before the old one is even buried.
“You consider that the Iranian deal, the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]—the one negotiated in 2015 with Iran—is a bad deal,” Macron told Trump at a joint press conference Tuesday. “For a number of months, I’ve been saying that this was not a sufficient deal, but that it enabled us, at least until 2025, to have some control over their nuclear activities. We therefore wish, from now on, to work on a new deal with Iran.”
Macron said that such a new deal would need to include a way to block Iran’s nuclear and ballistic activities in both the short and the long term while generating “the conditions for a solution” to Iran’s aggressiveness against its regional neighbors. The French president suggested this meant that a solution to the Syrian crisis should be “part of the broader picture.” Syria’s strongman leader Bashar al-Assad has depended on the support of the Iranian regime in his years-long civil war against his own people, strengthening Tehran’s presence in the Arab world and threatening Western allies there. But Trump sounded uninterested in the United States taking a more active role in solving the Syria question.
“When they made the Iran deal, what they should have done is included Syria,” Trump said. “They have to now step up and pay for what’s happening, because I don’t think France or the United States should be liable for the tremendous cost. The United States is embarrassingly into the Middle East . . . The countries that are there that you all know very well are immensely wealthy; they’re going to have to pay for this. And I think the president and I agree very much on that.”
Mark It Down— “But there is a chance—and nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12th, although, Mr. President, you have a pretty good idea—but we’ll see. But we’ll see also, if I do what some people expect, whether or not it will be possible to do a new deal with solid foundations. Because this a deal with decayed foundations.” —President Trump, on whether he will pull out of the Iran deal by restoring sanctions next month, April 24, 2018
President Trump on Tuesday clarified the White House’s nuclear demands on North Korea, telling reporters that complete denuclearization “means they get rid of their nukes.”
“It would be very easy for me to make a simple deal and claim victory,” Trump said. “I don’t want to do that. I want them to get rid of their nukes.”
Trump’s comment came on the heels of a weekend where he mistakenly claimed North Korea had “agreed to denuclearize,” prompting a day of equivocation from the White House on the precise definition of denuclearization. On Saturday, North Korea announced they would cease ballistic testing and close down one nuclear facility, but they did not pledge to give up their nuclear weapons, only promising to not use their nukes “unless there is a nuclear threat or nuclear provocation to our country.”
Trump did not elaborate on what he meant by his claim that North Korea would denuclearize, but said that he expected the upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un to be fruitful. “A lot is happening right now, I can tell you that,” he said. “And I think it’s going to be very positive. And I hope it’s going to be very positive for North Korea and for South Korea, and Japan, and the rest of the world.”
Team Trump Goes to China—A delegation of the president’s top economic advisers is heading to Beijing next week for trade talks with the Chinese. “The members of the U.S. team will include Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Trump didn’t say specifically when next week the trip would occur, but a person familiar with the discussions said they team is likely to be in Beijing around May 3 and May 4.”
Mark Your Calendars—Attention to all Milwaukee-area readers: The Weekly Standard Midwest Conservative Summit will be held this Monday, April 30, at the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. The half-day event is free of charge and will feature interviews with House speaker Paul Ryan and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. You can also see me and some of my colleagues, including Steve Hayes, John McCormack, Haley Byrd, and Charlie Sykes, discuss the political news. Find out more information and sign up here to get one of the remaining tickets.
Song of the Day—“I’m Waiting For the Day” by the Beach Boys
