White House: Trump has confidence in Shulkin ‘at this point in time’ 
 
 President Donald Trump has confidence in David Shulkin “at this point in time” despite reports that the Veterans Affairs secretary may be fired as early as this week, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said on Monday. 
 
 “We all serve at the pleasure of the president. If he is not pleased, you‘ll know it,” Gidley said in an interview on Fox News. “At this point in time though, he does have confidence in Dr. Shulkin. He is a secretary and he has done some great things at the VA. As you know, the president wants to put the right people in the right place at the right time and that could change.“ 
 
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 Shulkin has reportedly been viewed negatively after being accused of excessive spending on travel and for saying he has been given the blessing of the White House to purge VA staffers he accused of “subversion,” though he's been given no such approval. 
 
 When pressed about reports on Monday that Trump would like to fire Shulkin but doesn’t have a replacement, Gidley said, “When the president wants to make a change, he will make it.“ 
 
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 “He doesn't have to try, he doesn't have to guess. He has the power to do so whether he has a replacement or not, he can still make a change,” he said. “The president wants to put the best people around him to execute his policy.“ 
 
 White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah on Monday afternoon declined to discuss Shulkin's future, saying there will be “no personnel announcements” when he was asked about the secretary at the White House press briefing. 
 
 “I haven't asked the president about it today. I don't want to comment on it too specifically,” Shah said. ||||| Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin testifies on FY2019 and FY2020 budgets for veterans programs before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, in Washington.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin testifies on FY2019 and FY2020 budgets for veterans programs before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Associated Press) 
 
 PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is planning to oust embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin amid an extraordinary rebellion at the agency and damaging government investigations into his alleged spending abuses, three administration officials told The Associated Press on Sunday. 
 
 Two officials said an announcement on Shulkin could happen this week, subject to Trump's final decision as the White House hones in on possible replacements to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. One of the officials rated Shulkin's chances of being pushed out in the next day or two at "50-50." The three officials demanded anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel matter. 
 
 Trump, who spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate, told associates that he would keep two other administration officials who had been under fire: White House chief of staff John F. Kelly and Housing Secretary Ben Carson. 
 
 "He did say that he's expecting to make one or two major changes," said Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a Trump confidant who spoke with the president over the weekend, on ABC's "This Week." 
 
 "Now, other White House sources, not the president, tell me that Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is likely to depart the Cabinet very soon," Ruddy said. 
 
 The White House did not immediately comment. Shulkin did not respond to a request for comment Sunday. 
 
 Speculation over Shulkin's fate has ramped up in recent weeks following a blistering report by VA's internal watchdog in February that found he had improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets and his staff had doctored emails to justify his wife traveling to Europe with him at taxpayer expense. Earlier this month, two people familiar with the White House discussions told the AP that Trump increasingly viewed Shulkin as a distraction as the White House floated the names of possible candidates to replace him, including conservative "Fox & Friends" contributor Pete Hegseth. 
 
 A separate VA watchdog investigation, due out in the coming weeks, is also looking into a complaint that Shulkin asked his security detail to accompany him to a Home Depot store and cart furniture items, according to two people familiar with the allegation who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. 
 
 One person familiar with the White House discussions told the AP on Sunday that the White House was looking closely at roughly half a dozen candidates to head the VA, the government's second-largest department with 370,000 employees. 
 
 Among the candidates being vetted include Hegseth, a former military officer and former CEO of the conservative Concerned Veterans for America; former Rep. Jeff Miller, who had been chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee; retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; Michael Kussman, a former VA undersecretary of health; Toby Cosgrove, a former president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic; and Leo Mackay Jr., a former VA deputy secretary who is now senior vice president at Lockheed Martin Corp. 
 
 In the event of Shulkin's departure, deputy VA secretary Tom Bowman would serve as acting head of the VA until a nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Bowman has also come under criticism at the White House for being too moderate to push Trump's agenda of fixing veterans' care. 
 
 During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to fix the VA by expanding access to private doctors and firing bad employees, criticizing the department as "the most corrupt." Last year, Trump promised to triple the number of veterans "seeing the doctor of their choice." 
 
 But a Trump administration plan to expand the Veterans Choice program remains in limbo after lawmakers declined last week to include it in a massive spending bill. 
 
 In response to the ethics issues, Shulkin has denied wrongdoing and complained about internal drama at the agency that has made it difficult for him to push through VA improvements, citing a half dozen or so political appointees there who were rebelling against him. 
 
 But Kelly, the White House chief of staff, recently made it clear to Shulkin that he had become weary of the VA secretary's tendency to run to the media to voice complaints and claim a White House mandate that he did not fully have, according to a person familiar with the conversations who wasn't authorized to discuss them publicly and insisted on anonymity. 
 
 The department provides medical care and other benefits to 9 million military veterans in more than 1,700 health facilities around the U.S. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Yen reported from Washington. Washington bureau chief Julie Pace and Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin contributed to this report. ||||| Senate Confirms Pentagon Official To Head Veterans Affairs Department 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Carolyn Kaster/AP Carolyn Kaster/AP 
 
 President Trump's second VA secretary, Robert Wilkie, was confirmed 86-9 by the Senate on Monday. He takes the helm of the second largest department in the U.S. government, with more than 350,000 employees, a nearly $200 billion budget and almost 20 million American veterans depending on it for care and benefits. 
 
 That may sound like a herculean task. Now add that the department has been in turmoil since Trump sacked his first VA secretary, David Shulkin, with dozens of senior staff, subject matter experts and career officials quitting or being pushed out. 
 
 Wilkie was seen as a safe pick, and VA secretaries have traditionally gotten unanimous approval in the Senate as a sign of bipartisan cooperation on veterans issues. 
 
 For the first time though, eight Democrats and one Independent — Bernie Sanders — voted no. Sanders said he wasn't opposed to Wilkie in particular, but is against what he says are Trump administration moves to turn VA healthcare over to the private sector. 
 
 Wilkie is a Navy vet, a current member of the Air Force reserves, and the son of a severely wounded Vietnam combat veteran. He has decades of experience in Washington working for conservative congressmen and in the Pentagon. Wilkie served briefly as acting VA secretary when Shulkin was fired. 
 
 The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee gave Wilkie a fairly smooth hearing, though several democratic senators extracted what has become a standard promise: that Wilkie vowed to oppose efforts to privatize VA health care. The VA leans on the private sector already — former Secretary Shulkin increased that so about one-third of medical appointments done in the private sector are reimbursed by VA. That apparently wasn't enough though, according to Shulkin, who says he was pushed out by White House political appointees who thought he was dragging his feet. 
 
 With Shulkin's firing began a stream of high profile departures and what some Democrats in Congress feared was a political purge of the department. At a recent House hearing, Acting Secretary Peter O'Rourke testified that many officials were leaving because they were not in line with the Trump administration's "historic, transformative changes" that "are going to change the status quo." 
 
 Politics President Trump Removes David Shulkin As VA Secretary President Trump Removes David Shulkin As VA Secretary Listen · 4:20 4:20 
 
 O'Rourke previously led the administration's Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, which was set up to help clean house, with mixed results so far. 
 
 Besides the intra-office intrigue, Wilkie inherits a VA that is undertaking ambitious changes in the next year – including a major revamp of the way private care is paid for, a realignment of the VA's aging infrastructure, and an expansion of a caregiver program for disabled vets — all part of the recently passed VA Mission act, which Congress is now fighting about how to fund. 
 
 No less consequential, the department is also taking on new electronic medical record. All while facing a staffing shortage and unprecedented demand from aging Vietnam vets as well as recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His work is cut out for him.
– Reports were out over the weekend that Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin may be the next Cabinet member to get the boot, but White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley downplayed those reports Monday—somewhat. "We all serve at the pleasure of the president. If he is not pleased, you‘ll know it," Gidley said on Fox News, according to Politico. "At this point in time though, he does have confidence in Dr. Shulkin. He is a secretary and he has done some great things at the VA. As you know, the president wants to put the right people in the right place at the right time and that could change." Sources told CNN and the AP over the weekend that Trump planned to oust Shulkin, possibly as early as this week, but that he wanted to have a replacement selected first. Pressed on that subject, Gidley said, "When the president wants to make a change, he will make it. ... Whether he has a replacement or not, he can still make a change." Shulkin has been under fire due to accusations of excessive spending and policy differences with the White House, leading to friction within his department. (Trump was at one point reportedly considering Energy Secretary Rick Perry as Shulkin's replacement.)