Donald Trump visited Fayetteville, North Carolina, earlier this month — a Democratic city in a swing state with a large veteran population, a powerful cross-section of defense contractors, and, right down the road, Fort Liberty, one of the largest military bases in the world.
Before an audience dressed almost entirely in red, white, and blue, Trump promised to revert Fort Liberty back to its original name, Fort Bragg, which honored a slave-owning Confederate general. He also vowed to increase defense spending and remove “woke generals” from the Pentagon. Then he addressed the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Trump provided few concrete details on his record at the VA, which serves 9 million veterans through a comprehensive health and benefits system. He claimed that his leadership team had removed thousands of “sadists” from the agency and replaced them with “good, loving people that love our patriotic heroes.” He stated that the VA “was better before, and I hear it’s sliding,” attributing this alleged decline to President Joe Biden’s VA team, which he criticized as a “group of lunatics that don’t care about the military.”
In reality, the individuals Trump appointed to oversee veterans affairs during his presidency were controversial and implemented significant changes that weakened the VA. Two lesser-known appointees, Darin Selnick and Peter O’Rourke, played crucial roles in Trump’s veterans affairs legacy by pushing policies that degraded the agency’s conditions and redirected patients to private sector care.
Selnick and O’Rourke were instrumental in implementing Trump’s key veterans affairs initiatives: the 2017 VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act and the 2018 VA MISSION Act. These measures had the effect of diminishing the agency’s strength and reputation. The Accountability Act eroded labor rights within the VA and resulted in thousands of staff suspensions, demotions, and firings. The MISSION Act redirected patients to private care providers, which had the effect of weakening the VA’s healthcare system and budget.
Despite their significant impact, Selnick and O’Rourke did not attract as much attention as other controversial figures within Trump’s VA team. This team included individuals with questionable backgrounds and actions, such as promoting dubious PTSD treatments, advocating for predatory for-profit colleges, and pushing a flawed electronic health records system linked to veteran deaths.
These individuals emerged from an election where Trump garnered significant support from veteran voters. While Trump has not focused as much on veterans’ policy during this campaign, his past appointments and policies provide insight into what a potential second term might entail, including further privatization of VA services and restrictions to disability benefits for veterans.
Ultimately, Trump’s personnel choices and policy decisions during his first term highlight the importance of selecting qualified and dedicated individuals to serve in government roles. The impact of these choices on veterans and the VA system cannot be understated, and the consequences of appointing individuals who lack a serious understanding of government and its responsibilities can be detrimental.
Selnick, an Air Force veteran with ties to the Koch network, played a key role in shaping VA policy, while O’Rourke, a Navy and Air Force veteran with political experience, oversaw the implementation of key VA initiatives.
The Koch network prioritized the MISSION and Accountability acts, using the VA as part of their broader libertarian agenda. Selnick and O’Rourke, backed by Trump, were accused by former VA officials of trying to dismantle the VA. O’Rourke was criticized for being unprepared and targeting low-level employees, while Selnick bragged about passing MISSION through deceit. The consequences of these acts were severe, with outsourcing costs doubling and threatening the existence of VA clinics. Veterans were not considered in key decisions, with ego and deception driving the process. O’Rourke and Selnick also faced accusations of misusing taxpayer resources.
O’Rourke was compelled to step down from his position after reports surfaced that he was not fulfilling his duties for his $161,000 salary, as per complaints made to the Washington Post.
In July 2018, Tim Walz, then the ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, led a letter to the Department of Justice, accusing O’Rourke of dishonesty and withholding information from Congress. This led to calls for a criminal investigation, although no such probe materialized.
Today, O’Rourke and Selnick are heading a think tank called Veterans 4 America First, which is a semi-active 501(c)(3) organization staffed with former Trump VA officials. They are actively advocating for policies and potentially positioning themselves for a role should Trump secure a second term. Recently, they penned an op-ed titled “Biden’s Big Lie on Veterans.” (Attempts to contact the nonprofit for financial and goal-related information were unsuccessful.)
During the Trump administration, numerous competent individuals left the VA, prompting a statement from a VA spokesperson attributing the staff exodus to resistance to the level of reform being implemented.
Over the past four years, Biden’s VA appointments have reinstated professionalism within the agency, and the PACT Act, passed in 2022, secured significant increases in benefits for veterans. However, despite public support for VA services, Biden’s VA officials have continued to implement privatization measures outlined in the MISSION Act, placing the VA and its patients in increasingly vulnerable positions.
A potential second term for Trump could drastically alter the VA. Williams expressed concern, stating, “The danger now is that they’ve been vetting people, and doing more prep work. And the stakes are high. Veterans die when terrible decisions are made at the largest integrated health care system in the world.”
