• ickplant@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As one former senior administration official puts it: “You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol.”

    Have you tried having integrity and not working for him though?

    • mipadaitu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The federal government still needs to function, or a lot of people will suffer. Many people felt it was their duty to continue to do their best for the American people, even though they didn’t agree with the senior leader.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Dr. Ronny Jackson “would come around Air Force One asking Donald Trump’s senior staff if they needed anything. This included Provigil and [the sleep aid] Ambien, and he would hand them out, typically in the form of packets with two or three pills in them. . . . On a trip to Argentina in March 2016, one of those reports notes, Jackson’s “intoxicated behavior in the middle of the night, pounding on [a female subordinate’s] hotel room door, screaming, yelling, and overall loud behavior in his hotel room exhibited less than exemplary workplace conduct while on official travel to provide medical care for the President.” The Pentagon interviewed 60 of Jackson’s former subordinates; 56 “experienced, saw, or heard about [him] yelling, screaming, cursing, or belittling subordinates.” During a six-week stretch in 2018, a Defense Department hotline received 12 complaints” about Jackson.

    That’s current Texas representative Ronny “coked to the gills” Jackson, making those keen decisions for the people of Texas.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There wasn’t much the medical unit staffers could do, even if they wanted to hold the line. Several told Pentagon investigators “they feared they would receive negative work assignments or be “fired” if they spoke out.

    To any future poor bastards unfortunate enough to work for trump in any capacity, I offer the following: GET OUT. Science has proven, again and again ad nauseum, the guy is a demented rapist shitbag who is absolutley hell-bent on crime. Don’t be stupid.

    • Pofski@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have seen people during the Trump administration that were proud to get fired. I am not saying that I don’t get it, but I respect those people more.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    OUR INTEREST IN THIS STORY was sparked, in part, by a handwritten ledger reprinted on page 14 of the January inspector general’s report: a tracking form for the controlled substances ordered by the White House Medical Unit. In addition to the thousands of pills of Ambien and Provigil listed are even more potent sedatives and pain pills: morphine, hydrocodone, diazepam and lorazepam (better known by their brand names, Valium and Ativan), fentanyl, and even ketamine.

    . . . But as the handwritten ledger shows — and our sources confirm — the medical unit’s procedures had grown so sloppy, so lax, that it’s impossible to prove the negative, that these sedatives and dissociatives weren’t given to White House staff.

    . . . That might sound like minor errors in paperwork. They’re not. They’re the kind of transgressions that turn patients into addicts, and doctors into ex-doctors. “If you’re sloppy even a little bit with controlled substances, you’ll lose your [medical] license,” one source notes. Without proper record keeping, there’s no way to say just how much of the Trump White House was on drugs. There’s no way to tell how they might use — and abuse — prescription medications if they come back to power. “Nothing is written down,” another source says of the unit’s drug distribution during the Trump years, “because we will always get to yes.”

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The Trump administration was well known for its chaotic, often-erratic approach to policymaking — and for its atmosphere of paranoia, where staffers regularly spilled their colleagues’ secrets and bureaucratic factions often spent as much energy attacking one another as addressing matters of state. It’s impossible to know how much of that was fueled by the widespread availability of drugs like Xanax and Provigil.

    That reminds me of another government known for paranoia, backstabbing, and drug abuse.