Trump’s former physician and GOP ally is now a retired captain, not an admiral | Political Payback
Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician turned GOP congressman, regularly touts his military bona fides.
“As a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service I understand the commitment and sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen to serve our country,” the two-term representative from Texas says on his congressional website in a message posted to a page listing his work on veterans issues.
But Jackson is no longer a retired admiral. The Navy demoted him in July 2022 following a damaging Pentagon inspector general’s report thatsubstantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as a White House physician,a previously unreported decision confirmed by a current defense official and a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel move.
Jackson is now a retired Navy captain, those people said — a demotion that carries a significant financial burden in addition to the social stigma of stripped rank in military circles.
Despite the demotion,Jackson has continued to refer to himself as a retired rear admiral, including in statements released since the Navyreclassified him as a retired captain. Former president DonaldTrump and other Republicans have also continued to publicly describe Jackson using his former rank; it’s unclear if they were aware of his demotion.
Jackson’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the Navy’s 2022 personnel action and his demotion. The former White House physician has become a prominent voice in the 2024 campaign, repeatedly affirming Trump’s fitness to serve while castigating President Biden’s.
After publication of this story, the Navy provided Jackson’s service record, which shows the rank of captain retroactively applied to the date of his retirement in December 2019.
For an officer who served 24 years like Jackson, there isamore than $15,000 difference in annual pension payouts between a retired one-star admiral, the rank that Jackson held when he retired from the Navy in December 2019, and a retired captain, according to an estimate by Katherine L. Kuzminski, a military policy expert at Center for a New American Security. That payout gap is likely to widen over time as the military periodically increases its pay rates for each position.
Kuzminski also said that it was inappropriate for Jackson to describe himself as a retired rear admiral. “While it is possible that others will mistakenly refer to him as ‘Admiral’ in perpetuity, he himself should not make that mistake,” she said.