President Trump made a surprise announcement on Friday, telling unsuspecting acting VA secretary Robert Wilkie that he was going to be promoted to head up the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“Acting Secretary Wilkie who, by the way, has done an incredible job at the VA and I’ll be informing him in a little while – he doesn’t know this yet – that we’re going to be putting his name up for nomination to be Secretary of the Veterans Administration,” Trump said during a White House event on an unrelated topic.
Wilkie rose from his seat on the front row, stepped forward and shook Trump’s hand and the room burst into spontaneous applause.
“Fantastic. I’m sorry that I ruined the surprise. I’ll see you anyway. We’re very close to getting choice approved and we had just approved VA accountability which for almost 40 years they could not get approved,” Trump said about the House’s passage of a bill that expands veterans choices for getting care.
“And now as you know the House just passed choice and it’s the finer level of choice. We had different levels of choice: good, bad, OK and really good, and I think this falls into the really good category. It’s going to be a little more expensive but that’s OK. So important.”
The president a day earlier donated 25 percent of his $400,000 annual salary to the VA, and Wilkie was at the White House to accept the check from spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The VA has mired in turmoil in recent months, including by the March firing of Secretary David Shulkin amid ethics concerns and internal dissension.
Trump’s first nominee to fill the post, White House doctor Ronny Jackson, withdrew from consideration last month after a host of allegations about his behavior, including that he overprescribed opioids and got sloshed on the job.