Whether you subscribe to the Girther theory or not (White House physician Ronny Jackson shaved pounds off Trump’s actual weight to spare Trump placement in the “obese” category), Jackson seems like a good guy. He took care of the Obama people during the last administration, and they’ve got nothing but praise for him.
That doesn’t mean he’s qualified to run the VA, of course. People who understand the scale of that job are aghast at the nomination, and The Post says Jackson himself wonders if he’s up to the task:
Jackson was taken aback by his nomination, said senior White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. After aides gauged his interest in recent days, he hesitated to take on such a big job. But the president continued to push and told his senior staff Monday that the doctor was his top choice. A senior White House official described an informal interview process, without the extensive vetting that typically accompanies a Cabinet selection.
It’s unsurprising that Trump is driving the whole thing — impulsively, and in service of his own vanity, like everything else he does. Maybe Jackson will get Harriet Miersed during congressional hearings; that would probably be the kindest thing. Maybe he’ll get confirmed and face-plant on the job.
The possibility that he’ll get the support he needs to do the job well is vanishingly remote since this is the Trump administration; more likely, he’ll be surrounded by grifting vipers who will manipulate him and eventually sully his reputation, as former VA sec Shulkin implied on Chris Hayes’ show last night (though lord knows Shulkin has his own axes to grind).
Former CIA Director Brennan minced no words on the matter:
I personally know and greatly respect Ronny Jackson….as a terrific doctor and Navy officer. However, he has neither the experience nor the credentials to run the very large and complex VA. This is a terribly misguided nomination that will hurt both a good man and our veterans
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) March 29, 2018
All of Trump’s cabinet secretaries are either wildly unqualified or wholly unsuitable because their past positions indicate they are at war with the assets they’re supposed to protect. Ben Carson is a good example of the former, and Pruitt exemplifies the latter. Some cabinet members are both unqualified and unsuitable, such as Betsy DeVos.
As these folks do their jobs badly, I watch them accrue reputational damage and come under fire politically (the latter of which could have actual teeth if we flip the House) with unmitigated glee. They chose to work for Trump, and each, in his or her own way, is a horrible person and part of the vilest collection of villains outside a James Bond film.
Jackson seems different. Josh Marshall coined the term “dignity wraith” to describe people who willingly surrender any honor they think they possess to serve a pig like Trump. Becoming a dignity wraith is a ritual humiliation anyone who works for Trump must endure. Jackson is the first one I sincerely pity.
Big Ole Hound
A fine example of the famous “Peter Principle”…promote until unqualified and leave them there to screw everything up.
germy
Corner Stone
I can find no semblance of pity for the RADM. He stood in front God and Country and flat lied his balls off. All in the service of a brutish and stupid child-man. If he’ll do that for something with so small a stake, what will he do in the VA?
germy
Bobby Thomson
Someone willing to tell obvious lies for his superiors doesn’t seem like a good guy at all.
Major Major Major Major
I will have very little respect for this man if he does not decline his nomination.
dmsilev
@germy: There are a surprisingly large number of people who think that The Apprentice was a realistic portrayal of Trump and how he operates, rather than edited-to-an-inch-of-its-life fiction.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: I am so old that I remember when John Kelly was supposed to save us from the Orange One.
donnah
When these people are chosen by Trump, I’m sure at first they feel flattered and important. Maybe they think they can take the job and actually make a go of it, like Jackson seems to believe. It sounds to me like he’s just another face who was nice to Trump and obeyed the directive to deliver a clean bill of health, and this is his reward.
We all know the goal of Trump and his Bannon-inspired minions is to install people who are clueless and/or vindictive enough to destroy their assigned bureau. It’s the Trump
Democracy Destruction League in full motion. Jackson just looks like a guy who Trump feels did him a big favor and is handing him this position because he’s a loyal supporter.
The veterans deserve so much more and so much better.
PaulWartenberg
From what I’ve heard and read elsewhere, trump and co. want to privatize the entire VA system: which would be expensive, wasteful, a nightmare of switching bureaucratic methods (in other words, ripe for kickbacks and fraud). By putting a man with no administrative experience in charge of it, I’m figuring they expect to be able to operate behind Jackson’s back to pull off their scams and ripoffs.
the whole thing reeks of Teapot Dome.
Another Scott
A man’s got to know his limitations. (0:11)
Jackson had no business saying “yes” to taking the job – he’s not qualified.
Beyond that, anyone who says “yes” to Trump for a political appointment is not a good person. Full stop.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: the exemption to this rule for those who thought they could help mitigate damage by accepting closed some time ago.
JPL
@Another Scott: True!
PGE
The first question he’s asked at confirmation should be “What does the president weigh?”. That would tell us whether he’s willing to lie under oath for Trump.
Major Major Major Major
@PGE: hmm, who’s our most NFLTG Senator?
Corner Stone
I am surprised Trump did not nominate a CEO of a Healthcare privatization company. It’s the pattern for what he’s done at every other Cabinet position. Someone antithetical to the mission statement of the Dept, and just out looking to maximize their grift.
schrodingers_cat
Jackson is getting nominated for this job for lying about President’s weight. No, he doesn’t get any benefit of doubt from me.
Corner Stone
@PGE: They should play five minutes of that flop sweating press conference where he slavishly tongues Trump’s balls. And then ask him if he still stands by his toadying pronouncements.
And then beat him with rolled up magazines and chase him out of the hearing room.
pluky
@PaulWartenberg: And the veteran population has a unique set of case mix attributes (PTSD, odd cancers from exposure to munitions related toxins, long-term management of physical battlefield traumas, etc.) that will be difficult to serve if diffused into the general healthcare system.
schrodingers_cat
I also call bullshit on the dignity wraith hypothesis. If you can be stripped of your dignity so easily by a known charlatan then perhaps you had no dignity to begin with, what passed for your dignity was just a facade to fool the world.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: Instead of face the truth that Trump is a coward who is too timid to fire anyone himself. I wonder if he ever has in his entire time running his scamshop org?
Corner Stone
@donnah:
And if they are successful at privatizing the VA it may be years or decades before we can wrest it out of the for-profit industry’s hands. Their lobbyists will move heaven and earth bribing politicians to make sure that phat cash cow never leaves their pockets.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat:
Or your sense of self-importance and ego swell up to overtake any dignity that may have existed. I like the Dignity Wraith meme because for me it encapsulates a draining of the person’s soul/essence/whatever. But I prefer to think he does not strip them of their dignity, but rather allows them to fully reveal themselves for who they are.
catclub
“reluctant” seems to be inaccurate, ‘willing, but reluctant’ seems non-sensical.
Corner Stone
A competent and ethical person would behave in such a manner whether working for an upstanding man like Obama or a grifting con man buffoon like Trump. The cues from the top should not change how someone’s ethics work. The fact that we are seeing all of these Cabinet members, et al, aping the greed, grift and incompetence of Trump (not to mention some major paranoia), clearly indicates what horribly flawed people they were to begin with.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: But
Quite.
I think BC is giving Jackson too much credit here. These people who knowingly do T’s bidding are not dignified or noble and never were.
Just one more canuck
@Major Major Major Major: I’d love to see McCain ask that
Betty Cracker
Maybe I’m alone in this, but I’m not 100% convinced Jackson lied about Trump’s weight. I think it’s possible — likely even! But I’ve also read seemingly credible articles that say if Trump is just a bag of fat and bones wrapped in orange skin, he’ll weigh a lot less than his bulk suggests since muscle is the most weighty component of a human, and Trump is amuscular.
As to Jackson’s description of Trump’s genes, it is possible that someone who does not exercise or eat a healthy diet to have relatively low cholesterol, etc., due to fortunate genes. My granny lived to almost 90 on a diet of fried meat, potatoes and bacon-infused, overcooked vegetables. Smoked like a chimney too. She was healthy as a horse despite this, somehow.
I want that bastard Trump to drop dead of his vices probably more than anyone not named “Melania,” but sometimes undeserving shitheads live forever and good folks die young. There’s even a bad song about it.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I am pretty sure bones weigh more than muscle. He has muscles they are just not very well defined. A limp rubber band weighs the same as a taut one.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I noted that he has that southern drawl that I was humiliated by when I was an early teen, which I (and most city teens at the time) worked really goddamned hard to lose as this really isn’t a southern city culturally.
To me, given that he’s in my age cohort, it makes me trust him less; especially as it appears that his career has been pretty soft for the most part.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: flab and bone makes sense, and I have a theory about fasting like a high school wrestler to drop his weight as low as possible. Also, prune juice
My SIL’s doc found she had high cholesterol and told her to cut back on red meat and alcohol. She’s a vegetarian who drinks a glass of white wine when she goes out to dinner.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat & @Corner Stone: I don’t think I explained Marshall’s “dignity wraith” concept adequately, but I did link it. TL;DR — a dignity wraith needn’t have been a good person to begin with, just someone who has self-esteem, warranted or not, and surrenders it to Trump.
Haydnseek
@Corner Stone: This. Thanks. You beat me to it.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: Jackson stripped at minimum 30 pounds from Trump’s weight. My best guess is more like 50 pounds. I would put good money on a bet that Trump is within a cheeseburger distance of 300 pounds. And arguably he added two inches to his height. Nobody gets taller as they age past their 20’s. And if you believe Jeb! is actually 6’3″ then Trump is 6’1″ at best. And as this isn’t the NBA, I don’t really care how tall Trump is. I don’t particularly care how much he weighs either (except for the parts where he criticizes beauty pageant contestants about *their* weight). But the brazen and shameless lying about something so tedious just fits in with every other venal thing this endless black hole of ego does. The banality of evil, indeed.
catclub
@germy:
The next Cabinet officer that gets a phone call from Trump, in which they talk about the mission of the department, had better expect to be fired, soon.
Why else would Trump be interested?
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Its the lies that are offensive
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: I thought you did just fine with the dignity wraith thing. I was fully aware of what Marshall meant when he proposed it, I just prefer to interpret it in a different way.
prufock
@Betty Cracker: Don’t concentrate on the weight, pay attention to the height. He said Donny Dumbass is 6’3″. This is certifiably not true.
Also, Only the Good Die Young is a classic. Fight me! ;-)
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: @Betty Cracker: I too know about JMM and his dignity wraith descriptor. I just don’t equate self esteem with dignity. Pompous gasbag in the WH has plenty of self regard but zero dignity.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: It’s possible, but seems unlikely.
Yes, 239 pounds of muscle is different from 239 pounds of flab.
E.g. consider this guy going from 350 to 239. He’s not a muscle-bound heavyweight.
Trump has to be over 250, and probably over 275.
But we shouldn’t even need to be speculating about this. Jackson should have weighed him and documented it and showed the video (as questions about his weight have come up before).
That’s not even the weirdest thing about the report. 99% pulse-ox (SaO2)? For a 71 year old man who is obese and never exercises? Who snorts and sniffles all the time? Really? A number closer to 90-95% would be more sensible.
Too many numbers in the report defies belief. Maybe it’s right, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
His cholesterol numbers (223 total) looks more sensible than I’d recalled hearing before (~ 165?). He needs a higher dose of statins (as will supposedly be done) and to change his diet and exercise (as is obvious to anyone who looks at him).
Cheers,
Scott.
Thoughtful David
@Corner Stone: This.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Bone are hollow. Most of our body mass is water and muscles (and fat) have a lot of water.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nelle
I may be off here but I think one thing at play here is the reluctance of military men to say no to commanding officers. Trump, in his cunning way, has landed on this spot. Thus says the wife of a man, who was a nuclear submariner and spoke out about what he observed. What did he get for his efforts? Vietnam. Three tours in Vietnam.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: I know we are 70% water (or is it 80%)
Waldo
@Betty Cracker: The tell was when we found out Lard-Ass’s BMI was 29.9, rather than 30 or more, which would put him in the obese range. How often do you see BMI carried out to the tenths? My suspicion is Jackson either lied about Trump’s weight (or height) or accepted numbers provided by a staffer who tweaked them just enough to get him under sumo size. Either way, not a good sign.
germy
He may actually live another two hundred years.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: isn’t trump the dignity wraith, the one sucking the dignity out of people? source: dungeons & dragons
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I assumed Marshall alluded to Tolkien’s Nazgûl, ring wraiths who had been great lords until they surrendered their will to Sauron.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Don’t play D and D, but that was my assumption, that T is the dignity wraith sucking his victims of their dignity. If they fell so easily for a charlatan, and his hollow words, perhaps they had no dignity in the first place but just facade for public consumption.
ETA: The R party bigwigs and the evangelical pooh-bahs come to mind.
Frank Wilhoit
“…Jackson seems like a good guy….”
No, he doesn’t. He is a key party to the suppression and falsification of the results of the first/only potentially-accountable medical examination of the sitting President of the United States, a man who is patently and gravely ill, both physically and emotionally, and whose health and judgment are (properly or no) a matter of immediate concern to billions of people around the globe.
Admiral Jackson stood in front of press and public and lied his teeth out — not even in a craftsmanlike manner, but using extravagant language that appears to have been dictated by his patient or his patient’s staff.
It may not be specifically and narrowly a violation of the Hippocratic Oath for a doctor to do this, but it is clearly wrong and a special kind of wrong — the greater the trust, the greater the breach.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: @schrodingers_cat: it would appear from the TPM link that Betty is correct. I prefer my reading. In D&D wraiths drain ability points when they touch you so I figured a dignity wraith drained your dignity.
maya
Could it be that Prez* Dennison made a mistake? He really meant to nominate Dr Harold Bornstein head of the VA. Harry is the son of the infamous doctor who certified that Dennison had ‘Bone Spurs’ – medical transcription; B S – which, sadly, kept him out of the Nam action he so dearly wanted to get into
randy khan
FWIW, I’m not sure a flag officer would feel that it’s possible to turn down the President when asked to serve in whatever capacity. In most cases, there are ways of turning something down without turning it down, but Trump is so devoid of subtlety that I doubt they would work.
Really, the best outcome here would be for the relevant Senate committee (Armed Services, I presume) to give a signal that Jackson’s never getting a hearing, which would kill the nomination in the cradle.
schrodingers_cat
@randy khan: I was just following orders was not an acceptable defense at the original Nazi trials.
Bobby Thomson
@schrodingers_cat: this.
Aleta
Dr. Shulkin wrote at the NYT yesterday (excerpts and shortened):
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: no, Betty. I know from experience what a fat 239 looks like on a shorter frame. It’s much smaller than that. He’s full of shit.
germy
Brachiator
Dignity wraith is an excellent description. Jackson does appear to be a better person than the typical Orange Julius Caesar appointment. Too bad that he will likely end up torn, tattered and discarded like so many others. To paraphrase a 60s movie song,
How can we keep love alive
How can anything survive
When these little minds tear you in two?
What a Trump without pity can do
No, it isn’t very pretty what a Trump without pity can do
Corner Stone
@Aleta: That Shulkin fellow is hilarious. I can only hope Trump hears he is doing interviews and starts slamming him on twitter.
ET
Just because you are nominated doesn’t mean you have to accept a nomination. I suspect he feels pressured to accept it though which leave a good doctor in a terrible position. He is going to get thrown under a bus for tRump.
Bobby Thomson
Does anyone doubt Jackson would discourage immunization if Trump ordered it? I don’t.
MJS
@ET: There really is no pressure. He’s a doctor and officer. He can write his own ticket virtually anywhere. It’s not like he has no marketable qualities. He has no excuses for accepting the nomination, just as he has no excuses for lying about Trump’s health.
Aleta
@Corner Stone: The number of people dashing around DC with books to sell, interviews to grant, must be unprecedented.
ProfDamatu
@Another Scott: Sorry, pedantic biological anthropolgist here! Bones are not hollow in the sense of being empty; the spaces inside the cortical bone (the hard stuff on the outside) are filled with marrow and fat as well as trabecular bone in many parts of the skeleton. (The marrow is of course where blood cells are produced.) Marrow doesn’t weigh as much as the bone tissue, but it contributes! Usually the estimate is that the skeleton accounts for about 10-15% or so of an individual’s total weight. As for the other components, it’s highly variable – muscle might be 30-45%, for instance. If I had to speculate, I’d guess that in Trump’s case, both of those would be closer to the low end of the range for men, both due to age and because he doesn’t seem to get much weight-bearing exercise.
I have to say, though, that I’m generally a little uncomfortable with this type of discussion, especially all the pronouncements that he couldn’t possibly weigh what his doctor claims. Now, in his specific case, I do suspect the claimed weight isn’t accurate, but the idea that you can generally easily tell how much a person weighs just by looking at them is really problematic. There’s just way too much variation – this is just one example, of people with the same BMI (same height and weight) but wildly different body types. If made to guess their weights, I’d have probably estimated them to vary by at least 20 pounds.
Thinking out loud here, I suppose that this kind of discussion reminds me of the discussions I’ve run across elsewhere on the internet, but with women as the subject. Things can get pretty nasty and damaging very quickly, and I keep asking myself, if I’m not OK with tearing apart, say, a plus-size model or fitness blogger’s appearance on this basis, should I be okay with doing it to anyone? NB: I realize that I’m a new commenter here, and I want to emphasize that I am absolutely not trying to have a go at anyone in particular, or tone police, or anything.
Aleta
@germy: From your link:
That great tradition — of a rifleman (a good one) loading a bullet in a minute in a half.
Just how did “every asshole and his sister can have an assault rifle” become a well regulated militia?
Frankensteinbeck
@Frank Wilhoit:
To me, that was the tell. Medicine is weird, the human body is weird, and I reserve possibility for all kinds of ‘that can’t be true’ truths. But the language made it obvious Trump edited the report to be what he wanted to hear. Once you’re there, you can’t trust any of the numbers.
Aleta
@ProfDamatu: Interesting; thanks. Do the outer part of bones have lots of tiny holes in them as part of their normal structure?
ProfDamatu
@Aleta: You’re welcome! Really really tiny ones, yes – for example, long bones will all have what’s known as the nutrient foramen somewhere, usually near mid-shaft; the major blood vessel nourishing the bone enters there. There will also be very tiny openings where the periosteum (the tough connective tissue that encases and nourishes most bone surfaces) intertwines with the bone tissue itself, to anchor the periosteum in place. And all sorts of pathological processes can cause porosity. But in general, we’re not talking about anything nearly as open as the trabeculae.
NY Robbin
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually, that was pretty much Josh Marhsall’s final conclusion. That Trump brought out their latent corruption so to speak.
Corner Stone beat me to it. That’s what JM concluded
EBT
donnie really is 239, he is just 5 foot 10 not six three.
Another Scott
@ProfDamatu: I (almost) always welcome pedantic corrections, myself. ;-)
Your link to the women mockups is interesting, but I think would have guessed they all weighed about the same, myself.
I think we all agree that Jackson’s report might be correct. But it seems wildly implausible – like 5-standard- deviations-from -[t]he-mean implausible. And I’m sure he recognizes that. He should have been more transparent about it.
Your admonition to be careful about criticizing a person’s appearance is a good one. But it’s really, really hard to give Trump the benefit of a doubt here given his history…
Cheers,
Scott.
Stan
Maybe it’s different in the Navy, but in the Army everybody picks up a little southern accent because…..well actually I have no idea, but 30 years later I still say “y’all” and I’m from New York.
ProfDamatu
@Another Scott: Fair enough. Like I said, I wasn’t trying to have a go at you or anyone. I suppose I’m a bit more sensitive to the issue, being someone who’s fairly far out on the distribution (as in, I’ve had numerous people outright refuse to believe my weight, going all the way back to the Red Cross lady refusing to believe that I weighed enough to give blood as a teenager – now, they were underestimating rather than overestimating, but it still drove home to me the inherent problems there!). :-)
Corner Stone
@Another Scott: Not only that, but the chart of women is static. We can watch Trump interact within the environment and in different garb. I also would have had no issue stating the women all were within single digits of each other’s weight. The BMI aspect is meaningless to me, except for this case it’s just the part of the lie.
Corner Stone
@EBT: I think he’s fractionally around 6′, and may be approaching 6’1. He is not 6’3″. Trump slouches and lumbers around so you have to take comparisons when they are offered.
ProfDamatu
@Corner Stone: I guess y’all are better at weight estimation than lots of people. The chart of women may be static, but it’s also without clothes (I suspect that a large part of the reason that people underestimate my weight is how I dress…and of course it’s also possible to dress such that you look heavier than you are).
The overall point I was trying to make is just that as odious as I find Trump, I’m not wild about going much beyond saying that I think his doctor may be misrepresenting his weight. So often, when people do, it gets into dissections of how people of various weights look, how flabby they are, and such – I just get reminded, as I mentioned, of discussions of women’s bodies that probably wouldn’t be welcomed here (and which I doubt lots of the commenters here would want to engage in regardless of sex if it weren’t about a person they despise).
Corner Stone
@ProfDamatu: I may work at a circus but I’m not the Guess Your Weight guy. However, I just don’t find it very difficult to come to a conclusion when said conclusion is needed. Which it almost never is. The reason we, or should I say “I”, are having this point of contention is because it’s blatantly obvious that RADM Jackson lied. If a person weighed 180 and they claim to weigh 170, I might give them the raised eyebrow but not say anything about it. However, just like demanding we all agree Trump’s inauguration crowd size was the largest ever, period – this is the same demand that we all agree to not know what truth is. Well, whatever Trump weighs in reality it’s not going to start WWIII. Fine. I agree it’s a small thing. But it’s not about his weight or it’s a small detail. The discussion is that he lies every time he opens his mouth. He surrounds himself with people who will also lie, harass, attack, obfuscate and everything else on his behalf. I personally refuse to let the truth just elide on by.
Add to that the fact that I have never in my entire life hated a human being as much as I do Trump, with the burning power of a thousand nuns, then I contend this discussion is as relevant as any other in the Trumpian Era.
KS in MA
@Another Scott: This!
Raoul
If jackson were nominated a year ago, I’d give him some slack *bout would already expect that he’d take a massive reputational hit along the way).
But he cannot have been watching anything about this past 14+ months and still think “OK, I’ve been called to serve, and I’ll do my best and it’ll probably be alright.” Declining to be nominated is the only course of honor here. Though I’m sure declining would cause a different form of reputational damage and certainly ire from the Orange Menace.
A shitty bind. But accepting the nom seems the less honorable course. From way over here on my comfy couch, I hasten to add.
ProfDamatu
@Corner Stone: I agree with all that. My issue is the analysis (or whatever you want to call it) of why we think the doctor most likely lied frequently seems to devolve into analyzing Trump’s body in a way that I think most people here wouldn’t be super comfortable with were it someone else, and I think it can give cover to folks who do find it just fine to analyze random people’s bodies. But yeah, tangential issue, albeit one that’s been bugging me since the results of the physical first came out. Time for me to let it go.
Matt
Nope, sorry not buying it. Jackson’s a doctor who’s willing to lie in public to benefit Drumpf, and he could have declined the offer. He’s a morally-void grifter at best and a fascist sympathizer at worst. He’s being brought in to sabotage the VA – fuck that guy.
Tehanu
@Corner Stone: I’m obese myself, and since I’m not using my real name here, I’ll admit that I usually lie about my weight to try to avoid embarrassment. So in normal circumstances, I’d be inclined to give Dump a pass on lying about his weight, particularly because I hate fat-shaming and I hate being fat-shamed — except that, as you so accurately point out, he and his entire support circus, er, administration, lie about everything, all the time. Rear Admiral Jackson strikes me as someone who thought he should uphold the idea of maintaining the dignity of the presidency, and that a few polite white lies couldn’t hurt, but who — by now — ought to know a lot better; so he doesn’t get a pass from me either.