Pills were here, there, and everywhere during the Donald Trump regime; no wonder the president's personal physician was known as "The Candyman"

Report: White House operated like a pharmacy under Trump (NY Post.)

 

The White House Medical Unit (WHMU) during the Donald Trump administration unlawfully handed out pills to staff members -- even providing clandestine surgery, such as tummy tucks -- according to reports today at multiple news outlets. It is not known, at this point, if Trump himself was involved in any possible wrongdoing.Es

Edquire provides details under this headline for the ages: "Apparently the Trump White House Medical Unit Was Handing Pills Out Like Skittles; A Defense Department report makes the previous administration's clinic look like a West Virginia drugstore," Charles P. Pierce, of Esquire, writes:

Remember the great outcry when somebody left their cocaine lying around the White House lobby? (You have to remember it because it still comes up from time to time as a part of the Litany Of The Bidens memorized by all MAGA initiates.) Well, it turns out that it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, since the previous administration* was running a pill mill elsewhere in the building. From the Washington Post:

“We found that the White House Medical Unit provided a wide range of health care and pharmaceutical services to ineligible White House staff in violation of Federal law and regulation and DoD policy,” says a new report from the Defense Department’s inspector general. “Additionally, the White House Medical Unit dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff.” Many of those served by the unit should not have been."

Who appears at the center of this jaw-dropping escapade? That would be Dr. Ronny Jackson, who was Trump's personal physician during the time in question and used name recognition garnered from that gig to secure a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives -- from Texas, of all places. Writes Pierce:

The report paints a scathing picture of the military-run facility with 60 medical personnel, who are tasked with treating the president, the vice president and the White House staff. It also provides new context to systemic problems in a clinic that made headlines when Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), who was Donald Trump’s personal doctor until 2018, was accused by almost two dozen colleagues of improper activities, including providing prescription drugs without proper paperwork — a habit that allegedly earned him the nickname “Candyman.” A 2021 Defense Department inspector general report later corroborated some of those claims, which Jackson denied and described as politically motivated.

Even without Jackson's barely discernible oversight, the White House Medical Unit appears to have been operating like one of those small-town West Virginia drugstores that were used as free-standing opiate outlets.

“All phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems,” the inspectors found. It stocked four opioid pain medications: fentanyl, hydrocodone, morphine and oxycodone. But the pharmacy protocols were so poor that they “increased the risk for the diversion of controlled substances” to illicit use. For example, controlled medications, including sleeping pill Ambien and stimulant Provigil, were dispensed “without verifying the patient’s identity.” A witness told investigators “Dr. [X] asked if I could hook up this person with some Provigil as a parting gift for leaving the White House … in the unit, it was authorized for us to do that kind of stuff.”

It sounds like Jackson was operating an open-air pharmaceutical bazaar, providing all kinds of services, at all kinds of hours. Writes Pierce:

Yo, Doc. Hook me up with some of the good stuff.

Even clandestine surgery was available.

Wait. What?

Aliases were used “to provide free specialty care and surgery to ineligible White House staff members at military medical-treatment facilities,” according to the report. Former staffers told the inspectors that an ineligible White House employee received free elective surgery and that “the unit altered practices to cater to high‑ranking officials.” One staffer said “we bent the rules to meet this very weird, strange culture that was there, and I think it was really to just impress people.”

The "very weird, strange culture" of the previous administration* already has been demonstrated in 100 different ways, some of them criminal. But I never figured that their White House was full of people getting covert tummy tucks and running the country while hopped up on goofballs. Crazy, man. Far out.