A Victim of the Shadow Government

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before the career diplomats working in Ukraine discovered a “highly irregular” power structure around President Trump determined to undermine and derail them, a Trump cabinet secretary said the same thing happened to him. Today, David J. Shulkin, former secretary of Veterans Affairs, speaks about his experience with “a dual path of decision making in the White House” and how falling out of favor with President Trump’s political appointees ended his tenure. Guest: David J. Shulkin, a former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Trump administration. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background listening and reading:Mr. Shulkin’s story matches a pattern described that career diplomats have described to the impeachment inquiry. Here’s a “Daily” episode about their testimony.Back channels to the White House are at the heart of the investigation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily.
0:10.1	Today, before the career diplomats who deal with Ukraine, discovered a shadowy power
0:17.2	structure around President Trump that was determined to undermine and derailment.
0:21.8	A little known Trump cabinet secretary said that the same thing happened to him. A conversation
0:31.1	with former secretary of veterans affairs, David Schulken.
0:38.6	It's Thursday, October 24.
0:41.2	Do you go by secretary or a doctor?
0:48.5	Secretary.
0:49.2	Secretary.
0:50.0	Yeah. Okay. So I want to start with the email that you sent me because I think it was interesting.
0:57.9	You describe yourself as somebody who was fired essentially by a tweet from the president.
1:03.2	And that came after an ordeal that you went through that involved political appointees,
1:10.6	essentially undermining you. And you call the experience
1:16.0	strangely unusually relevant these days with the issue of interference by outside political
1:22.8	influences. And you specifically mentioned what happened to Ambassador Marie Yvonnevich,
1:27.7	the US Ambassador to Ukraine. And you said we should perhaps talk about it on the daily.
1:32.7	So here you are.
1:33.9	Well, at the time of course, this all seemed very unique to me.
1:40.4	But as I've now been out of the Trump administration for almost 18 months,
1:46.5	I have noticed a similarity in the behaviors and the patterns.
1:51.7	There's a lot of talk about how the State Department seems to be
1:55.2	sidelined in this administration.
	...

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