(Headline USA) Police video released Monday shows Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, being taken to the ground by officers, profanely berating them and threatening to report them to the governor during an altercation at a rodeo last month.
The video has fueled yet another leftist-media feeding frenzy, although accounts of the events in question have thus far suggested that Jackson, a trained physician, was nobly attempting to act as a good Samaritan assisting with a medical crisis when law-enforcement initiated the confrontation with the two-term lawmaker.
I will apologize for my language, but I will not apologize for getting upset & speaking my mind considering the circumstances. If I had to do it again, I would still step up & act in a life-threatening situation. I will ALWAYS help someone in need. I WILL NOT apologize for that.
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) August 15, 2023
In body camera video, the former White House physician can be seen approaching a group of people surrounding a 15-year-old girl who authorities have said was having seizures. Jackson later has what looks like an argument with one of the people attending to the teenager before she is put on a stretcher.
Shortly afterward, Jackson is wrestled to the ground by at least two officers. The 31-minute video, which has sound in only some portions, shows officers turning Jackson facedown and putting him in handcuffs before helping him to his feet.
“I’m going to call the governor tomorrow and I’m going to talk to him about this [expletive], because this is [expletive] ridiculous,” Jackson can later be heard telling a state trooper, his voice raised.
State police released the video footage days after Jackson defended his actions in a post on social media.
I was not drinking and, again, I was asked to help the teenager when no other uniformed medics were present. I’m a trained ER physician and I was doing what any doctor would’ve done in a similar situation.
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) August 12, 2023
Kate Lair, a spokesperson for Jackson, reiterated the congressman’s comments in a statement Monday in which she said he was prevented from providing medical care to the teenager due to “overly aggressive and incompetent actions” by officers.
“Congressman Jackson, as a trained ER physician, will not apologize for sparing no effort to help in a medical emergency, especially when the circumstances were chaotic and the local authorities refused to help the situation,” Lair said, quoting Jackson’s Aug. 11 tweets nearly verbatim.
Chris and Jodi Jordan said they were at the rodeo in White Deer, a small town outside the Panhandle city of Amarillo, and witnessed some of what happened.
They said Jackson was trying to help the girl before medics arrived and that the deputies were needlessly rough in pulling him away.
“We were just appalled,” said Chris Jordan, 48, of Hereford. “The slamming to the ground I didn’t understand whatsoever.”
The Jordans said that after the incident they discussed talking to news reporters about what they had seen with an aide to Jackson. The congressman’s office referred the Associated Press to the couple.
Shortly after the encounter, Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry talked with Jackson by phone. According to the sheriff’s written report, Jackson repeatedly told Terry that there needed to be consequences for the deputies who had handcuffed him.
After Terry responded that he didn’t need to be threatened, Jackson said that “he would pull hell and high water and come and ‘bury me in the next election,’ ” the sheriff wrote.
Jackson was elected in 2020 after serving as a top White House physician for both presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. A year later, following some of Jackson’s public comments questioning President Joe Biden’s mental and physical fitness, the Biden Defense Department’s inspector general released a scathing report about Jackson’s conduct while on the job at the White House.
The report concluded that Jackson made “sexual and denigrating” comments about a female subordinate, violated the policy on drinking alcohol on a presidential trip and took prescription-strength sleeping medication that prompted worries from his colleagues about his ability to provide proper medical care.
Jackson denied the allegations and said at the time that the report was a “political hit job.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
