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Trump won votes promising to protect veterans, but major veterans groups are rattled by his plans [View all]
By Evan Halper (Los Angeles Times)
December 22, 2016, 3:25 PM |Reporting from Washington
...
Under pressure from conservative activists, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and organizations funded by the Koch Brothers, Trump is contemplating choosing an agency chief who would upend the entire veterans healthcare system. That would come over the protest of the country’s major veterans groups.
...
Sarah Palin’s name has been raised. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has openly sought the job. Some in the transition team have touted Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic and a cardiac surgeon who served in Vietnam. Obama considered him for the job several years ago.
Most alarming to some of the country’s main veterans groups is Peter Hegseth, the former executive director of Concerned Veterans for America, one of a network of nonprofit groups bankrolled by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. The 36-year-old Hegseth, a Fox News contributor, has met with Trump more than once.
...
Rieckhoff’s group and other major organizations have urgently requested to meet with Trump. They have not been able to get a commitment. The transition team instead sent a delegation to talk with them which included Omarosa Manigault, a star of Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
“It is actually insulting,” said Rieckhoff. “The highest-ranking person the leading veterans services organizations have met with is Omarosa.”
...
Gingrich is offering his own advice, lobbying Trump to pay no mind to the veterans groups. ....
...
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-veterans-20161222-story.html
December 22, 2016, 3:25 PM |Reporting from Washington
...
Under pressure from conservative activists, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and organizations funded by the Koch Brothers, Trump is contemplating choosing an agency chief who would upend the entire veterans healthcare system. That would come over the protest of the country’s major veterans groups.
...
Sarah Palin’s name has been raised. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has openly sought the job. Some in the transition team have touted Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of the Cleveland Clinic and a cardiac surgeon who served in Vietnam. Obama considered him for the job several years ago.
Most alarming to some of the country’s main veterans groups is Peter Hegseth, the former executive director of Concerned Veterans for America, one of a network of nonprofit groups bankrolled by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. The 36-year-old Hegseth, a Fox News contributor, has met with Trump more than once.
...
Rieckhoff’s group and other major organizations have urgently requested to meet with Trump. They have not been able to get a commitment. The transition team instead sent a delegation to talk with them which included Omarosa Manigault, a star of Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
“It is actually insulting,” said Rieckhoff. “The highest-ranking person the leading veterans services organizations have met with is Omarosa.”
...
Gingrich is offering his own advice, lobbying Trump to pay no mind to the veterans groups. ....
...
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-veterans-20161222-story.html
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