Trump, Famous for ‘You’re Fired,’ Offers VA Chief Only Awkward Silence

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wants to replace his secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, but for a man who practically trademarked “You’re fired,” the president is reluctant to pull the trigger, choosing instead to leave the embattled secretary twisting amid reports of his imminent ouster.

Shulkin, a former hospital executive and medical doctor who remains widely popular on Capitol Hill, has so far averted his gaze from the White House and pressed on with his duties, albeit with a diminished profile.

The peculiar, painful dance between the president and his once-prized Veterans Affairs chief has become a symbol for how Trump often handles personnel matters — publicly, without concern for ending the drama quickly, and with a hope that offending employees will decide to leave instead of forcing the president to oust them. In this case, the standoff has left rudderless a vast federal bureaucracy of about 370,000 employees that serves more than 20 million veterans.

Exactly when the latest White House drama would conclude was still uncertain Tuesday. Trump told friends over the weekend that he planned to fire Shulkin in the immediate future. But Monday came and went without any change and the president’s advisers said he had no clear option for an immediate successor.

Raj Shah, a deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday afternoon that he had “no personnel announcements to make at this time,” when asked to characterize the relationship between the two men.

The reversal of fortunes for Shulkin, a rare holdover from the Obama administration, has been swift. For months, as Shulkin delivered a series of bipartisan legislative victories to a White House badly in need of them, Trump showered him in praise. At one such bill-signing ceremony in June, Trump teased that the secretary need never worry about hearing his “Apprentice"-era catchphrase, “You’re fired.”

But that support began to erode in February, after the department’s inspector general released a blistering report that found “serious derelictions” related to a business trip taken by the secretary to Britain and Denmark last year. It concluded that the secretary had spent much of the trip sightseeing and improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets as a gift.

The report provided ammunition for Shulkin’s critics within the department, who had increasingly broken with the secretary over how to approach one of the White House’s top policy priorities: the expansion of government-subsidized private health care for veterans. A handful of officials — including his two top communications deputies — worked behind the scenes to try to use the document to build support for his ouster.

Perhaps more consequentially for Shulkin, Trump’s advisers say White House officials began to believe that Shulkin misled them about what would be in the report, which ushered in a new round of negative news media reports on the president’s Cabinet. He made matters worse, they said, when he botched attempts to clean up the story and went public with fears about appointees “trying to undermine the department from within.”

As stories about potential replacements began to circulate in mid-March, Trump summoned Shulkin to the Oval Office for what one person briefed on the discussion described as a tense meeting. An aide to Shulkin disputed that characterization. Shulkin has played down speculation about his departure as he has testified about the department’s budget request for the coming fiscal year and met privately with lawmakers to discuss pending legislation to remake the department’s approach to private care. He was scheduled to host a regular meeting on Thursday with leaders of the nation’s largest veterans groups.

But he has proceeded with a curtailed public profile. The secretary was not on hand for a veterans event at the White House on Friday, for instance, and he is now hurried in and out of events by a security detail without taking questions from the press. Those who have spoken with the secretary said he had made it clear that he wanted to continue in the department’s top job, but was increasingly isolated.

Ashleigh F. Barry, a spokeswoman for the secretary, said on Tuesday only that Shulkin was focused on the work of the department.

The speculation and mixed messages coming out of the White House have flummoxed key lawmakers in both parties, who continue to support the secretary, as well as many of the major veterans groups, which are congressionally chartered and largely apolitical. Organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion hold considerable sway over veterans policy in Washington, and they solidly back Shulkin.

Though the groups were generally displeased with the findings turned up by the inspector general, they see the secretary as a pragmatic and effective leader who understands the challenges facing the department’s sprawling health care system and has taken concrete steps to address them.

“We are disappointed about all this speculation that is happening because we feel that the secretary has done a good job of leading the VA in a positive direction,” said Garry Augustine, the executive director of Disabled American Veterans.

The groups and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are closely watching for candidates to replace Shulkin, many of them fearful that the White House might try to use the nomination to advance a long-held conservative goal of shifting more of the department’s health care to private doctors. A nominee seen as too aggressive on privatization would likely face a difficult path to confirmation in the Senate, where Republicans have only the narrowest of majorities and several key Republicans have indicated an uneasiness with several of the names floated by people close to the White House. Those candidates include Jeff Miller, a former Florida congressman who led the House Veterans Affairs Committee and is now a lobbyist in Washington; Keith Kellogg, a retired three-star Army general who serves as the chief of staff of the National Security Council; and Leo Mackay Jr., a former deputy secretary at the department who is now an executive at Lockheed Martin. Trump has also discussed the job with Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Another potential nominee, Pete Hegseth, is said to be uninterested in the nomination. Hegseth is a weekend co-host of “Fox & Friends” who formerly ran Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative veterans advocacy group backed by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch. The group has led the push to let veterans use their government benefits at private doctors.

In the meantime, Shulkin may not be the only department official on his way out. Several high-ranking officials opposed to the secretary have indicated that they, too, intend to leave. Darin Selnick, an influential conservative voice on veterans issues within the administration, departed a position on the White House’s Domestic Policy Council on Friday and has decided to leave the administration entirely. Others, including the department’s assistant secretaries for communications and legislative affairs and its press secretary, have indicated to allies that they are searching for jobs elsewhere in the administration.