You mad, bro?
Minutes after Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, withdrew his nomination under considerable scrutiny, the President had a target to focus his ire: Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.
Trump, speaking with Fox News, slammed the ranking member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee for leading the charge against Jackson, making it clear to his supporters that Tester's campaign for reelection in 2018 should be a focus after yet another one of his nominations went down.
There should be a "big price to pay in Montana," Trump said of Tester. "I think this is going to cause him a lot of problems in his state."
Tester is one of a handful of Democrats running for reelection in the Senate in a state that the President overwhelming won in 2016. But Tester has cut out his own brand of liberalism in the state and is looking to bank on his authenticity to deliver him another six years in office.
Tester was the face of the Jackson opposition. A document released by Democratic staff on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday evening alleged that Jackson was "abusive" to his colleagues, loosely handled prescription pain medications and was periodically intoxicated, even once wrecking a government vehicle while drunk.
First off, Ronny Johnson shouldn’t have been nominated in the first place:
On Wednesday, the committee’s Democratic staff released a two-page document fleshing out the accusations. They were explosive.
In one instance, Dr. Jackson stood accused of providing such “a large supply” of Percocet, a prescription opioid, to a White House Military Office staff member that he threw his own medical staff “into a panic” when it could not account for the missing drugs, the document said.
In another case, at a Secret Service goodbye party, the doctor got intoxicated and “wrecked a government vehicle.”
And a nurse on his staff said that Dr. Jackson had written himself prescriptions, and when caught, had simply asked a physician assistant to provide him with the medication.
Also, Tester thanked those who stood forward against Jackson:
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, who was reviewing allegations against Ronny Jackson, President Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, thanked the “service members who bravely spoke out” shortly after Jackson withdrew his nomination Thursday morning.
“It is my Constitutional responsibility to make sure the veterans of this nation get a strong, thoroughly vetted leader who will fight for them,” Sen. John Tester (D-MT) said in a statement Thursday. “The next secretary must have a commitment to reform a strained health care system and a willingness to stand up to special interests who want to privatize the VA. My sleeves are rolled up and ready to work with Chairman (Johnny) Isakson (R-GA) to vet and confirm a Secretary who is fit to run the VA.”
In the statement, Tester also said he is urging Congress to “continue its investigation into the White House Medical Unit.”
You can watch Tester’s interview with Anderson Cooper below just how bad Jackson’s record is:
Everyone is surprised that Tester went as far as he did to piss off Trump. Including this clown:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was reportedly taken aback that Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) so aggressively pursued allegations against President Donald Trump’s veterans affairs secretary nominee Ronny Jackson, given that Tester faces reelection this year in a state that the President won by over 20 points in 2016.
“I’m frankly a little surprised at how emboldened he has felt,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told the Washington Post. “He apparently isn’t too worried about the election.”
But Tester isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right. Plus, it’s not really that big of deal electorally for him:
Just how worried should Tester be?
Trump won Montana by a hair more than 20 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016, 56.2 percent to 35.7, and he remains relatively popular there. According to Gallup, the president’s average approval rating in the state during his first year in office was 52 percent—one of only nine states where it topped 50 percent. Republican Greg Gianforte won last year’s special election for the state’s at-large House seat after more or less pledging allegiance to Trump, who then sent his son Donald Jr. and Vice President Mike Pence to the state to push Gianforte across the finish line. The man Gianforte replaced in Congress, Ryan Zinke, is currently Trump’s secretary of the interior, a position he has used to bestow preferential treatment on his home state.
Still, Montana isn’t as dark red as its neighbors. The state has voted for the GOP nominee in every presidential nomination since 1992, but a Democrat has occupied the governor’s mansion in Helena since 2005, and it’s been more than a century since the state didn’t have at least one Democratic senator. Tester, meanwhile, has already won statewide office twice, albeit narrowly. He claimed his first Senate term in 2006 by less than one point over GOP incumbent Conrad Burns and then won his second term six years later by four points over Denny Rehberg, then the state’s at-large representative in the U.S. House. This year, Tester will face whoever emerges from a crowded GOP primary, where the front-runner is doing his best to hide his Maryland accent and the rest of the challengers have their own flaws. As one of 10 Democratic senators up for re-election in a state Trump won, Tester is considered vulnerable in November, but nonpartisan handicappers don’t believe he is as vulnerable as some of his colleagues, like Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, or Joe Donnelly in Indiana.
Before he went to battle over Jackson’s nomination, Tester had tried to navigate a middle ground with regard to the president. His first re-election ad highlighted 13 bills he backed that Trump signed into law—as well as the three fingers Tester lost in a childhood accident with a meat saw—even as Tester broke with the president on some high-profile priorities. He began the year by voting against the stopgap spending bill to end a three-day government shutdown, making him the only Democrat in a state Trump won to do so. And just this week, he announced he’d vote against Mike Pompeo for secretary of state over concerns the CIA director will be too eager for war, a decision that put him at odds with Heitkamp, Manchin, and Donnelly, and one that is unlikely to stop Pompeo from being confirmed.
For his part, Tester did his best on Thursday to keep the focus on the veterans and off the president, a move that suggests he’d rather avoid a prolonged fight with Trump in an election year. “I want to thank the service members who bravely spoke out over the past week,” he said in a statement following Johnson’s withdrawal. “It is my constitutional responsibility to make sure the veterans of this nation get a strong, thoroughly vetted leader who will fight for them.”
It seems unlikely the abandoned VA nomination will have much political staying power in itself, particularly in a state like Montana where nearly one in 10 residents is a military veteran, and with Tester framing the fight as protecting those vets against a clearly unqualified nominee. The bigger question is whether Trump will stay mad at Tester for the next six months. If the president goes on the warpath against him, steering the middle ground will get much more difficult.
It’s important we make sure Tester knows we have his back for stopping Trump from having another bad person in his cabinet, let alone handling Veterans Affairs. Click here to donate and get involved with Tester’s re-election campaign.