The man picked by President Trump to take over as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs says he’s “got what it takes” to lead the troubled agency.
“I think I’ve got what it takes, and you know, I don’t buy into that argument [that I lack experience] at all,” Ronny Jackson said in a profile of him published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on Sunday.
The Texas native was appointed to be the doctor to the president by former President Barack Obama in 2013, and retained by President Trump. Last month, Trump announced he planned to replace David Shulkin with Jackson as the VA secretary.
“I’ve been in leadership school for 23 years now. … And I’ve been able to rise to the level of an admiral, a flag officer in the Navy. I didn’t just stumble into that. So I’ve gotten a lot of leadership background, I’ve got a lot of leadership experience as a Navy officer, and I’ve got a lot of day-to-day leadership experience,” Jackson told the newspaper.
He added: “You know, I’m not just an officer in the Navy; I’m an emergency medicine physician in the military. I’ve been confronted on a day-to-day basis with life and death decisions.”
Jackson, a Navy rear admiral, first worked in the White House under former President George W. Bush. He told the paper that former Bush employees who were on Trump’s presidential transition team helped him remain in his role in the Trump administration.
“Some of the people that were working on the Trump transition had been a part of the Bush 43 administration, and they knew me,” Jackson explained. “They talked to President Trump about it, and I talked about it with him, and he just immediately appointed me as his physician as well.”
Jackson also said he “won’t stay on active duty” and will “be a vet right away.”
“I’ve been overseas, and I’ve been deployed in combat zones with Marines and soldiers and airmen and sailors, and I’ve seen first-hand what they go through, the injuries and the things they come home with. I’ve seen how that happens, and how devastating it is to them and their families. I just want to make sure that we do our part as a country and we let them know that we appreciate that and we take care of them,” he said.
