Robert Wilkie
Donald Trump apparently is continuing his practice of nominating totally unqualified right-wingnuts to prominent positions in his administration. Huffington Post has reported that Trump intends to nominate Robert Wilkie to head up the Department of Veterans Affairs. Wilkie, who has been serving as acting secretary since Trump fired the previous VA head David Shulkin, “played a key role in the administration’s ban on transgender service members” when he was undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness at the Pentagon, HP notes.
Wilkie recommended to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that transgender people be allowed to serve only if they do so “in their biological sex,” a recommendation that Mattis later passed along to Trump.
Trump made the announcement Friday morning, May 18, at a summit at the White House on prison reform, and in doing so continued another of his traditions — blurting things out without telling people in advance who probably needed to know. Wilkie was in the audience when Trump made the announcement and admitted that he had not yet run the idea past Wilkie himself.
Trump also failed to give advance notice to outside veterans groupsm the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.
Matt Thorn, the spokesman for OutServe-SLDN, said his organization will be urging senators to ask Wilkie where he stands on LGBTQ issues.
Progressive veterans advocacy group VoteVets and nonprofit legal organization Democracy Forward Foundation have joined forces to file a lawsuit arging that Wilkie’s appointment as acting VA secretary was illegal because Trump bypassed the order of succession in choosing Wilkie.