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443375 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 06:56:42
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Trump’s Cronies Threw the VA Into Chaos. Millions of Veterans’ Lives |
URL: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/28/trump-veterans-va-darin-selnick-peter-orourke/ |
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© THE INTERCEPT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Trump’s Cronies Threw the VA Into Chaos. Millions of
Veterans’ Lives Are on the Line Again.
Former VA officials warn that another Trump term could
irreparably damage the healthcare system for millions
of veterans.
Jasper Craven
October 28 2024, 10:54 a.m.
Share
Donald and Melania Trump during an unannounced trip to
Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on December 26, 2018.
Donald and Melania Trump during an unannounced trip to
Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on December 26, 2018. Photo:
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump ventured to Fayetteville, North Carolina,
earlier this month — a Democratic city in a swing state
with a large veteran population, a powerful cross-
section of defense contractors, and, right down the
road, Fort Liberty, one of the largest military bases
in the world.
Before an audience dressed almost entirely in red,
white, and blue, Trump pledged to revert Fort Liberty
back to its original name, Fort Bragg, which honored a
slave-owning Confederate general. He also vowed to
increase defense spending and scrub the Pentagon of
“woke generals.” Then he turned to the Department of
Veterans Affairs.
Trump offered few true or tangible details on his
record at the VA, which operates a robust health and
benefits system that serves 9 million veterans —
proclaiming, for instance, that his leadership team had
purged thousands of “sadists” from the agency and
replaced them with thousands more “good, loving people
that love our patriotic heroes.” He insisted that the
VA “was better before, and I hear it’s sliding,”
chalking up this alleged deterioration to President Joe
Biden’s VA team, which he derided as a “group of
lunatics that don’t give a damn about the military.”
In truth, the people Trump chose to staff the VA and
lead on veterans’ policy during his presidency
constitute a rogues’ gallery of wild characters that
rivaled, and perhaps even surpassed, the dysfunctional,
self-serving appointees who ran rampant across various
agencies on Trump’s watch. Few of them, however, did as
much damage as two-little noted appointees who
implemented Trump’s most controversial changes over the
VA: Darin Selnick and Peter O’Rourke.
Selnick and O’Rourke were key to implementing the twin
pillars of Trump’s veterans affairs legacy: the 2017 VA
Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act and the
2018 VA MISSION Act, which together served as a one-two
punch to weaken the agency. First, the Accountability
Act degraded conditions inside the VA — undermining
labor power, gutting workplace protections, and leading
to thousands of suspensions, demotions, and firings of
front-line staff. From there, MISSION funneled millions
of patients to appointments outside the VA, enriching
the private sector while weakening the agency’s health
care capacity, budget, and reputation.
That the pair managed to avoid infamy may owe only to
the buffoonish crew that operated Trump’s single-term
VA. This cadre includes a beer mogul who promoted snake
oil PTSD treatments; a slick-haired “Fox & Friends”
host who sought GI Bill money for predatory for-profit
colleges; a longtime Marvel Entertainment executive
who, along with two fellow Mar-a-Lago members, pushed a
shoddy electronic health records system that’s been
tied to the deaths of at least four veterans; a White
House doctor accused of handing out prescriptions “like
candy” and whose nomination to be VA secretary was
derailed after he was credibly accused of drinking on
the job; and a Lost Cause sympathizer alleged to have
attempted to dig up dirt on a congressional staffer and
Navy veteran after she reported being sexually
assaulted at the VA hospital in Washington.
These characters and their chaos emerged from an
election that Trump won on the backs of veteran voters.
While the decorated Vietnam War veteran, the late Sen.
John McCain, R-Ariz., won the veteran vote by 10
percentage points during his 2008 presidential bid,
Trump, who viciously insulted McCain on the trail, took
veterans by a whopping 27-point margin. According to a
political science analysis of 2016 voting data, Trump
also received exceptionally high support in American
communities with the highest combat casualty rates,
which was key to his victories in three swing states:
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump racked up
similar margins in 2020 and appears poised to again
dominate among those who served in the military come
November 5.
Trump has generally talked a lot less about veterans’
policy during this campaign than his first two. Few
tangible policy VA proposals have emerged from Trump or
the Republican platform. There are, however, some clues
in Project 2025’s detailed section on veterans policy,
which, according to a former senior VA official, is
eerily reminiscent of the VA road map drafted during
Trump’s first transition. This slate of radical
proposals includes further privatization of core agency
services, as well as major restrictions to VA’s
disability rating system, which determines the
compensation amounts that veterans receive for their
service-related disabilities.
If Trump’s presidential term proved anything, it’s that
personnel is policy. The figures who staffed his first
term can help illuminate how a second one may play out.
Many would surely return to the VA under what Trump has
promised will be a government flushed of career
officials and then stocked exclusively with the type of
loyal ideologues who dominated the VA during his
administration.
“Government is serious business for serious people,”
said Kayla Williams, an Iraq War veteran who served as
a senior VA official during the Obama, Trump, and Biden
administrations. “And that’s what I feel like is
missing from these Trump people’s core understanding of
the world. Government matters, people’s lives are at
stake, and putting in charge figures who think
government is a game or a joke or a way to enrich their
buddies, or a way to score political points, is
dangerous and misguided and deeply tragic.”
Selnick, an Air Force veteran brought into politics by
the Koch network, helped write MISSION and oversaw its
implementation. O’Rourke, an Air Force and Navy veteran
with a background running a Republican political action
committee, became the founding director of the VA’s
Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection.
(The MISSION and Accountability acts were top
priorities for the Koch network, which has, since the
Obama years, cynically cast the VA as a failing
bureaucracy as part of its broader libertarian agenda.)
Four former senior VA officials said Selnick and
O’Rourke were leaders in what they described as a pack
of Trump-backed goons who worked to “break” or “blow
up” the VA. (For this story, The Intercept spoke to
five former senior VA officials, all of whom, apart
from Williams, requested anonymity to insulate
themselves from professional backlash.)
Two of the former VA officials singled out O’Rourke,
who also briefly served as chief of staff and acting VA
secretary, as being woefully unprepared for the job.
Before the VA, O’Rourke helmed Strong America Now, a
now-defunct Republican PAC that pushed presidential
candidates to embrace a business-efficiency model known
as “Lean Six Sigma.” Neither O’Rourke nor Selnick
responded to press queries.
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[443377] [443399] [443396] [443403] [443401] [443410] [443442] |
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443377 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 09:08:35
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Trump’s Cronies Threw the VA Into Chaos. Millions of Veterans’... |
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First they're neglected medically and psychologically, then
DJT calls fallen veterans "losers"...
Soooo many veterans...soooo many votes...reasons to be
cheerful...many blue drops... ;)
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Responses:
[443399] [443396] [443403] [443401] [443410] [443442] |
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443399 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 12:07:06
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Trump’s Cronies Threw the VA Into Chaos. Millions of Veterans’... |
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They want to privatize the VA, and even charge active
military for medical care while serving (force them to
buy private insurance).
What they want is their hands on the VA budget to fill
their pockets off the welfare (or neglect of, and
breaking of a promise to) those who selflessly serve
their country--often to their own harm, or life.
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Responses:
None |
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443396 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 11:44:25
From: The Hierophant, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Which is why |
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I don't understand all the veterans who support him??
Being called 'losers'? Not getting the care they need?
and that is ok with them??
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Responses:
[443403] [443401] [443410] [443442] |
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443403 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 12:38:53
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Which is why |
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I honestly don't think many of them actually understand
how it will actually impact and do to them and their
care.
Unfortunately, they may find out only too late.
I don't have the site right now, but during the last
presidential election in 2020, active military voted
51% for Biden, not Trump.
Vietnam era vets seem to skew more left...Iraq vets
tend to skew more right. Actives under trump, slightly
left.
I've spent a LOT of time at the VA in waiting rooms
while husband receives treatment, and have talked to a
LOT of veterans, and veteran family members as well as
VA staff.
The ones on the right mostly do not believe Trump would
do that to them. They don't trust anyone but Trump, and
if someone tells them anything different, they are
suspect. Like in the civilian population, they are very
big on conspiracy theories and secrets.
But no, not anywhere close to all Veterans like Trump.
It's closer to the regular, non-veteran population.
If you look at proj 2025, they would very much like to
outsource VA care to private medical/insurance
industry, forcing many veterans to have to buy private
insurance or receive no health care. Lay massive
amounts of staff off and close many hospitals and
clinics that currently operate. They would like to
revoke VA disability or reduce it for millions of vets
now receiving partial disability, also. The Burn pit
bill would be revoked if they have their way, and
veterans who are now getting cancers and other effects
from those toxic pits, dropped from receiving care for
it from their own government.
We've already had a preview of what kinds of things
will happen when Trump was in power last time. They had
a budget to build a new, larger and modern clinic in
our county, so our vets didn't have to travel 100+ mi
to the VA hospital in L.A. and back just for simple
things (like an X-rays, MRI, Orthopedics etc).. The
money was there, and plans were going forward. Then
Trump decided he was going to build his wall and
couldn't get what he wanted from congress, so he raided
the Military building fund (that funds not only
building clinics, but base housing and school repairs
on bases for families of active military, and so much
more).
Our clinic did not get built after waiting for 10 yrs
of promises.
That kind of thing will only increase if he's reelected
and get ten times worse, if any of those project 2025
plans actually get initiated.
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443401 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 12:20:00
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Which is why ?? phantom VA reform claims |
URL: https://apnews.com/united-states-government-a03dce0e5cb343f9a6438986a2607844 |
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Trump lies. Repeatedly. Why anyone would believe him
is, in my understanding, only due to the army of
apologists that, as the NRA, Evangelicals, Fox News,
billionaires, have something to gain because they have
already bought and paid for him.
And maybe, not supporting someone veterans have trusted
so long would be admitting they were wrong, duped,
fools and too stupid to wake up. Those need an
honorable way out of utter humiliation.
And he's lying a long time. This article is from 2017.
Three or four claims of improvement Trump touted were
done or begun under Obama. He had only been in office
a year or so.
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[443410] [443442] |
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443410 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 13:17:03
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Which is why ?? phantom VA reform claims |
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Yeah, like the "choice" program was under Obama's
administration. I know full well because my husband had
issues with it and worked with our congressman on fixes
(early hitches in the program). Those changes did go
through...and it is available "for some things" that's
cut down on 150 mi trips down to L.A. for about 25% of
the care. Obama passed the "Choice" program in 2014.
That was all in place under Obama, not Trump. Trump lies
and says he did it. He did not. I was there. Hubby was
enrolled before Trump was ever in office the first time.
Trump is, as always, full of shit.
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[443442] |
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443442 |
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Date: October 29, 2024 at 16:59:46
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Which is why ?? phantom VA reform claims |
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Thank you.
I was going to post the Veterans for trump list of
reasons to support trump and found so many lies in the
first of the list I just quit, disgusted.
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