The following article by Paul Sonne and Lisa Rein was posted on the Washington Post website June 26, 2018:
Robert Wilkie, President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a conservative Washington insider who would bring three decades of military policymaking and a deep list of Capitol Hill connections to a Cabinet post responsible for serving one of the administration’s most crucial constituencies.
But when he appears Wednesday for his Senate confirmation hearing, Wilkie also will draw on a career spent working shoulder to shoulder with polarizing figures in U.S. politics and often defending their most divisive views.
Wilkie, 55, has impeccable credentials: three decades at the center of the country’s most important military policies. The son of an Army artillery commander severely wounded in Vietnam — and a reserve officer in the Air Force himself. A trusted lieutenant of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with contacts in Congress spanning at least five administrations. Continue reading “Trump’s VA pick, once a defender of Confederate symbols, built his career serving polarizing figures”