Donald Trump knew about Ronny Jackson’s personal troubles before the fake physical
Even as Donald Trump’s scandalously failed nomination of Dr. Ronny Jackson has played out over the past week, the big question in the background has been when Trump learned about Jackson’s alleged personal troubles. More specifically, did Trump know that Jackson was compromised when he convinced him to falsify the results of a physical earlier this year. Now it turns out the answer is yes.
Mike Pence’s physician had such problems with Ronny Jackson’s conduct last year, he took his concerns all the way to the top of the White House, according to a new report from CNN. To be clear, this was about Jackson violating patient privacy records, and was a different set of accusations than the more recent allegations of drinking on the job and handing out drugs inappropriately. But the upshot is that Trump has known since last year that Jackson was allegedly troubled and compromised.
This casts the events of earlier this year in a new light. Trump somehow managed to convince Jackson to conduct a physical and then announce results that were comically falsified, including increasing Trump’s height by an inch and decreasing his weight by a few dozen pounds. Jackson’s willingness to lie about this means that every word of the report was likely a lie, and that if he discovered any problems with Trump’s physical or mental health, he buried them. But the question has always been how Trump convinced Jackson to put himself at such risk by going along with it.
Now we know that Donald Trump knew there were serious allegations of professional misconduct against Dr. Ronny Jackson at the time he had Jackson give him a physical. In turn we need an investigation into whether Trump used this information to forcibly coerce Jackson into faking the results of the physical.
