CNN’s “The Lead” anchor Jake Tapper grilled White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough over the scandal involving failures of the Department of Veterans Affairs to give veterans timely treatment.
Tapper detailed the failures under current VA Secretary Eric Shinseki such as the 2011 Legionnaires Disease outbreak and the fact that the VA officials responsible for the outbreak were given perfect performance reviews and raises, and blasted the “culture of no accountability” at the VA.
He also detailed a 2013 letter from House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-FL) raising concern over malfeasance within the VA healthcare system that was responded to with “boilerplate.”
After McDonough argued that the VA is working on fixing the problems within its system Tapper asked “How many stories like this, how many letters like this, how many dead veterans do you need before somebody asks the question within the White House ‘Maybe this guy isn’t the best steward of these veterans’?”
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