Among the 41 counties that make up Texas’ godforsaken 13th congressional district, there are no blue spots at all. It’s a largely unvaccinated rural hellhole that includes 2 of the most politically backward, anti-American counties in America: King County and Roberts County. In 2020, Trump won the 13th district with 72% (one of his best showings anywhere). He won King County with 94.97% (8 people voted for Biden) and Roberts with 96.18% (Biden had 17 supporters). Trump’s personal physician, drug-addicted crackpot Ronny Jackson was on the ballot for the first time that year. The voters in the Panhandle and the shitholes northwest of Dallas up against the Oklahoma border, found just what they were looking for. Jackson won every county and took 79.4% of the vote, even better than Trump! If Marjorie Traitor Greene declares a “national divorce,” TX-13 will be the first to join her— and I, for one, won’t shed a tear.
In his first run for anything, 217,124 people voted for Jackson, likely, I regret having to say, not a sentient being among them. Jackson, the White House drug dealer under both Obama and Trump said he didn’t prescribe fentanyl and morphine… which is true; but he just handed out the drugs without prescriptions.
Bush brought Jackson into the White House Medical Unit and Obama let him stay. Trump absolutely loved him— he gave a notorious Jan. 16, 2018 press conference lying about Trump’s health, claiming he had “incredibly good genes,” performed “exceedingly well” on a cognitive test and claiming that “if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old”— and appointed him Secretary of Veteran Affairs. But not even a rubber-stamp Republican Senate was up for confirming a drug addicted sexual predator and psychopath… so, after serving as Trump’s Chief Medical Advisor (a made up position), he decided to represent TX-13 in Congress instead. After blatantly lying about Trump’s weight and height to cover up his obesity, Trump nominated him for Naval promotions. The Senate turned him down both times.
Today, Jackson is a happy alcoholic spouting whatever the MAGA line for congressmembers is on any particular day. Yesterday, Dan Diamond and Michael Kranish reported how the extremist loon got his White House nicknames: “Dr Feelgood” and “the Candyman.”
In her memoir, Unhinged, Omarosa blew the whistle on the way Jackson ran the White House Medical Unit: “They would give out anything, right from the bottle, no prescription needed.” Diamond and Michael Kranish reported that “Now, the Pentagon has confirmed many aspects of what Manigault Newman said was an open secret among senior officials. A long-awaited inspector general’s report released last month faulted previous White House medical teams for widely dispensing sedatives and stimulants, failing to maintain records on potent drugs including fentanyl, providing care to potentially hundreds of ineligible White House staff and contractors, and flouting other federal regulations. ‘We concluded that all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems,’ the report concluded, adding that the challenges threatened the unit’s primary mission— to keep the president and vice president healthy and safe.”
The inspector general’s report sparked significant public alarm. But a Washington Post review found problems with the unit’s conduct were even more pronounced than the Pentagon’s latest findings, according to administration documents and interviews with former White House staffers and medical unit members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations and internal procedures.
Four former members of the White House Medical Unit confirmed that in both the Trump and Obama White Houses, the team passed out sedatives such as Ambien and stimulants such as Provigil without proper prescriptions, provided complimentary medical equipment and imaging to ineligible staffers, and used aliases in electronic health records to disguise the patients’ identities and deliver free care in cases where the recipients wouldn’t be eligible.
Former staffers said those practices were shaped by Ronny Jackson, an emergency medicine physician who led the team under President Barack Obama, continued to exert control over it as President Donald Trump’s personal doctor, and ultimately spent nearly 14 years in the White House. Now a Republican congressman, Jackson used his proximity to both presidents to build influence by dispensing medical care and drugs without proper procedures, the staffers said— conduct that earned him nicknames such as “Candyman” or “Dr. Feelgood,” according to a whistleblower complaint to Congress in 2018.
According to Jackson’s own portrayal, he worked as a personal doctor to dozens of officials, providing whatever they needed and whenever they needed it.
“It was full-blown, over-the-top, concierge executive medicine, and we did it better than anybody else on the planet. As a result, everyone treated me and my team very well,” Jackson wrote in his 2022 memoir, Holding the Line, where he described how his practices helped him win favor with both Obama and Trump. “The entire medical unit had a special place in the hierarchy of the White House… I had a lot more to offer than any doctor they had ever had before, and they needed me close by.”
The congressman and his allies have dismissed criticism about his work in the White House as politically motivated, anti-Trump attacks— a message his office echoed recently, alleging in an email that the inspector general is helping conduct a “hit job directed at the healthiest President of all time.” Jackson’s office also argued that he should not be blamed for events that took place after December 2014, when he stepped down as the medical unit’s director while remaining in the influential role of physician to the president, and said that White House lawyers and senior Defense Department officials were aware of the unit’s practices, contrary to the inspector general’s findings.
… Jackson’s former colleagues say they remain concerned about his conduct and proximity to power. The longtime military doctor is arguably the most prominent voice who has vouched for the health and mental acuity of Trump as he seeks to return to the White House. The new Pentagon report also arrives amid widespread questions about the 81-year-old Biden’s own fitness to serve, placing new scrutiny on the White House medical team trusted with his health.
“This isn’t a partisan issue— it’s a Ronny Jackson issue,” said a former colleague in the White House unit, lamenting that Jackson disregarded medical norms to satisfy powerful people. “It was bad under Obama, and it got worse under Trump… If Trump empowers him again, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
… Under Pentagon rules, the medical unit’s primary mission was to treat the president and vice president, their families and military personnel. The unit also could provide emergency care if something happened on the White House grounds. While some other senior officials could use the unit’s clinics, they needed to reimburse the military health system for those services.
After taking charge of the unit, Jackson dramatically broadened its mission with a unique theory: “care-by-proxy,” arguing that providing regular, complimentary treatment to officials close to the president was necessary for the president to do his job. Jackson also oversaw an expansion of the unit, which reached more than 60 staffers by 2019— triple its size when he arrived.
“I was eventually taking care of the entire West Wing, East Wing, and everyone who supported them,” Jackson wrote in his memoir. “The First Family, most of the cabinet secretaries, all the assistants to the president, the chief of staff, the national security advisor, the press secretary, the Secret Service, the White House staff, Air Force One, Camp David, the presidential helicopter squadron, the White House Communications Agency, the White House Mess, the military aides, and anyone else who worked in the White House were all my patients.”
The decision to treat hundreds of people also had another benefit for the ambitious Jackson: endearing him to officials across multiple administrations. Some of those officials have said they were wowed by Jackson’s commitment to caring for people beyond the White House, including their relatives and friends.
…Jackson, according to his memoir, was a lifelong conservative who kept his views to himself during the Obama administration, was privately thrilled by Trump’s election and was persuaded by the incoming team to stay on, a decision he says he conveyed to Obama on the morning of Inauguration Day 2017, shocking the outgoing president.
White House Medical Unit staff have described the thrill of working in the building— and the difficulty of saying goodbye.
“The proximity to power can be as intoxicating as power itself,” Eleanor “Connie” Mariano, a former White House physician to Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, wrote in her memoir, The White House Doctor.
In his own memoir, Jackson describes becoming the daily companion of Trump, working out of an office directly below the president’s bedroom and greeting Trump every morning before walking him to the West Wing. The nation’s new leader came to rely on his physician for private policy advice, especially because Jackson was often the first person he saw each day. For instance, Jackson in his memoir writes that he urged Trump to ban transgender people from serving in the military— a decision that he said Trump announced the next day, befuddling Pentagon officials who could not identify the military experts that Trump claimed to have consulted.
Former medical unit staff told The Post that Jackson’s behavior worsened under Trump, saying that the longtime military official was quicker to berate staff and insist that senior Trump officials get access to whatever care they wanted.
[Omarosa] said she stands by her assessment of the unit in her memoir, which describes easy access to prescription drugs and other care granted to her and other senior officials.
“I was taken aback by how very freely they were dispersing some of the most powerful and addictive pain medication in the program,” she said in a text to The Post.
Jackson also become the most important public champion of the president’s competence, planning a comprehensive series of medical and cognitive tests in January 2018 that he believed would address unfair doubts about Trump’s physical and mental health.
“His health is excellent right now,” Jackson told reporters after the tests. “The President is mentally very, very sharp… I think he will remain fit for duty for the remainder of this term and even for the remainder of another term, if he’s elected.”
Some physicians and reporters raised questions about whether Jackson’s assessment was correct or credible— keying on Jackson’s praise for Trump’s “incredibly good genes” and his joke that the president could “live to be 200 years old” if he only ate healthier. But at the time, they were rebuked by former Obama officials who vouched for Jackson as an apolitical operator.
…Two months after Jackson’s glowing endorsement, Trump tapped his physician to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, the nation’s $90 billion health system that cares for millions of military veterans and their families.
The decision would change the arc of Jackson’s career and bring new scrutiny to his team.
As a key Senate hearing on his nomination approached in April, the panel’s top Democrat said he received an urgent call. A uniformed officer who had worked with Jackson wanted to warn Congress that he was unfit for the job, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) later recounted.
“‘You cannot confirm this guy,’” the officer said, according to Tester’s memoir Grounded. The officer warned that while the president’s physician had charmed Trump, he had been a vindictive leader, reckless with prescriptions, and alleged that he had consumed alcohol on the job.
Tester’s office later spoke with 22 other current and former colleagues of Jackson who offered similar testimonies. On April 25, Tester circulated a two-page memo summarizing their claims, including an eye-popping allegation that “Jackson got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle”; Jackson withdrew his nomination the following day.
“He would’ve done a great job,” Trump lamented in an interview on Fox & Friends that morning. “These are all false accusations. These are false. They’re trying to destroy a man.”
The failed VA nomination did not end Jackson’s political career, though it did push him closer to Trump. The president named Jackson his chief medical adviser in 2019, supported his long-shot candidacy for Congress in 2020 and even dispatched several of his top political advisers to help Jackson when it appeared his campaign was flailing.
Jackson also embraced Trump on the campaign trail. Once Obama’s physician and friend, he now railed against his policies and mocked Biden’s cognitive health— prompting a swift, private rebuke from his most famous former patient.
“I expect better, and I hope upon reflection that you will expect more of yourself in the future,” Obama wrote in an email to Jackson.
Jackson sailed to victory in November 2020, winning his congressional seat by a 60-point margin. Days into his new role as a congressman in March 2021, the Pentagon released its inspector general report into the whistleblower claims first surfaced by Tester three years earlier. Investigators could not verify allegations that Jackson “got drunk and wrecked a government vehicle,” and some staff praised his high standards for performance.
But the Pentagon watchdog did conclude that Jackson had mistreated his colleagues and subordinates; of the 60 witnesses who had worked closely with Jackson, 56 said they were aware that Jackson’s behavior toward staff involved “yelling, screeching, rage, tantrums, and meltdowns.” The report also cited episodes where Jackson discussed a female staff member’s anatomy, drank on the job and took Ambien while he was supposed to be on call to the president.
The report concluded that Jackson continued to play a major role in the unit after he stepped down as director in 2014, when he was replaced by his former deputy Keith Bass; for instance, Jackson continued to sign employee evaluations until 2017, the Pentagon said, and staff told the inspector general he continued to bully them. Bass, who led the unit through 2019 and now serves as medical center director for West Texas VA Health Care System, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The Navy secretary should “take appropriate action regarding [rear admiral] Jackson,” the watchdog recommended.
The Pentagon declined to comment on whether it had penalized Jackson, who retired from the Navy in December 2019, ahead of his congressional campaign. The Navy did take an unspecified “administrative action” against Jackson after the 2021 inspector general report substantiated allegations against him, a Defense Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
In his memoir, Jackson says he turned down an opportunity to comment for the report. He also claimed that the probe would have gone away if he hadn’t entered politics and aligned himself with Trump.
“This was happening because I am a perceived threat to the Biden administration and because a few political appointees in the Department of Defense want to make a name for themselves,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon watchdog announced that it had opened a second probe into the practices of the whole medical unit. Investigators interviewed more than 120 officials, including staffers who worked in the unit across a decade, and reviewed hundreds of documents before sending a draft of its findings to the White House military office— which oversees the medical team— in May 2020.
More than three years after it was delivered to the White House, the report was released last month. It’s unclear what caused the delay, although Trump in April 2020 ousted the Pentagon inspector general who was overseeing the report and other investigations.
The Pentagon didn’t respond to questions about the delay. The White House referred questions to the Pentagon.
Unlike the Pentagon’s earlier examination of Jackson’s behavior, the agency’s new report does not mention any individuals by name, occasionally referring to the “physician to the president”— Jackson’s title at the time— or decisions made by the unit’s broader leadership. But the 80-page report paints a portrait of a medical team that often disregarded rules intended to protect patients.
For instance, the watchdog concludes that the White House medical team repeatedly flouted pharmacy safety standards, including by handing out controlled substances such as Ambien or Provigil without verifying a patient’s identity as Pentagon rules required. Former team members told The Post that Jackson helped institute a culture where such behavior was normalized.
The Pentagon further blamed the team for writing incomplete prescriptions that were missing information required by the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as years of shoddy record-keeping.
“These records frequently contained errors in the medication counts, illegible text, or crossed out text,” the watchdog concluded, including photographs of sloppy paperwork.
The Pentagon also took a dim view of Jackson’s broadening of care, saying that senior military officials either denied knowledge of “care by proxy” or stated that it was not an approved practice. As many as 20 patients per week were ineligible for the care that they received free from the White House Medical Unit, the report concluded, and even the most senior presidential aides should have repaid the military health system if their care was not waived. The watchdog added that it could find no evidence that those patients’ costs of care had been appropriately waived.
Former medical staff also told the Pentagon that some senior presidential appointees wrongly received free specialty care and even surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center— under aliases assigned by White House Medical Unit leaders, disguising their identities. The staffers who spoke to The Post repeated those claims. The Pentagon watchdog said it was unable to confirm those allegations because alias accounts could not be tracked or audited.
The inspector general’s report identifies multiple examples of how favoritism shaped the White House team’s choices. For instance, “medical care was prioritized by seniority rather than medical need, which increased the risk to the health and safety of non‑executive medicine patients,” the report found, a conclusion echoed by former members of the White House Medical Unit.
“It was very clear from Day 1 that people were treated differently based on how powerful they were perceived to be,” said a former member of the team.
The White House team also refused to order low-cost generic drugs because their patients preferred to use brand names such as Ambien— which was about 174 times more expensive than its generic equivalent. That decision squandered taxpayers’ dollars, the Pentagon concluded; the unit wasted about $100,000 just on buying Ambien, Provigil and sleeping drug Sonata between 2018 and 2019, rather than their cheaper generic equivalents. The decision to buy costly name brand drugs also flouted federal regulations that instruct military health officers to purchase low-cost generics when available, the report found.
The watchdog also rebuked the medical team for maintaining self‑service, open‑access containers where White House officials and visitors could retrieve common over‑the‑counter painkillers, cough drops and other medications.
While many private workplaces offer similar cabinets, “the Navy Manual of the Medical Department expressly prohibits this practice,” the Pentagon wrote.
Today, those medication cabinets have been removed, two officials told The Post— one of the most visible examples of how the new Pentagon report has resonated at the White House.