Ronny Jackson

Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician turned GOP congressman, regularly touts his military bona fides. But Jackson is no longer a retired admiral. The Navy demoted him in July 2022 following a damaging Pentagon inspector general’s report that substantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as a White House physician. Jackson is now a retired Navy captain, those people said — a demotion that carries significant financial burden in addition to the social stigma of stripped rank in military circles. The Defense Department in January 2024 released a second inspector general report into the White House medical team’s operations that does not name Jackson but faults aspects of how the unit was run while he served in the White House, such as the unit’s lax controls for powerful drugs like Ambien and the stimulant Provigil. Jackson, who first arrived at the White House in 2006, served as the medical unit’s director between 2010 and 2014 and as personal physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump between 2013 and 2018. Obama, who personally chose Jackson as his physician in 2013, considered him a friend and promoted him to a one-star admiral in October 2016. Trump soon attempted to put Jackson in his Cabinet as secretary of veterans affairs, a failed nomination that prompted a whistleblower complaint to Congress and, later, the Pentagon’s inspector general’s investigations. Trump also twice nominated Jackson to become a two-star admiral, although the nominations stalled and he was not promoted. Jackson retired from the military and left the White House in 2019 to run for Congress, a long-shot campaign that succeeded with the backing of Trump. Jackson won reelection in 2022 and has emerged as a leading critic of President Biden’s fitness for office.