Robert Wilkie walked into a White House summit on prison reform Friday as acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and he walked out of that event as Donald Trump's new nominee to lead the veterans agency. Bloomberg writes:
President Donald Trump surprised Robert Wilkie Friday by announcing he would nominate the acting secretary of Veterans Affairs to lead the agency.
“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 at a White House event on prison reform.
Turning toward Wilkie, who was in the audience, the president added, “I’m sorry that I ruined the surprise.”
Let that be a lesson to every would-be White House guest: you never know when your world is about to get turned upside down. Best to just stay home.
By virtue of his title alone, Wilkie, who was caught "off guard" by the news, clearly has more relevant experience than Trump's last train wreck of a pick, White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson. But Jackson was also a surprise of sorts—he really wasn't on anybody's radar before the announcement. That went well.
Perhaps Trump just wanted to bypass the tedium of having to lobby another person to take the post, like he did with Jackson.
Anyway, Wilkie already has his detractors, writes the Military Times.
But both AMVETS and VoteVets.org have openly challenged his appointment to the post, saying that Trump illegally bypassed VA Deputy Secretary Thomas Bowman in installing Wilkie in the temporary leadership role.
Here we go again.