PREVIEW: SPECIAL EDITION - Will Kaback interviews journalist Jasper Craven about the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and why its being targeted with cuts by the Trump administration.

Summary

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Tangle Podcast – Special Edition

Will Kobach interviews journalist Jasper Craven on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Trump Administration Cuts
Date: March 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special edition of the Tangle Podcast features Senior Editor Will Kobach in conversation with investigative journalist Jasper Craven. The episode delves into the evolving role of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), its significance as a progressive, large-scale public service provider, and the increasing political efforts—particularly under both Trump administrations—to cut funding, outsource care, and reduce staffing. Kobach and Craven analyze whether these moves aim to solve real problems or quietly undermine one of America’s pivotal public institutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Core Mission and Scope of the VA

• Jasper Craven highlights the VA as one of the largest federal agencies with a sprawling mission. Beyond delivering healthcare and benefits to about 9 million veterans, the VA also:

  • Provides housing vouchers for homeless vets
  • Oversees a vast medical research wing
  • Offers job training, social work services, and runs the third-largest federal police force
  • Administers the GI Bill and supports educational opportunities

  "It offers housing vouchers to homeless veterans. It has a massive research wing, medical research wing. It does, you know, job training. It has social workers. I mean, it has a massive police force, the third largest federal police force in America." – Jasper Craven (04:06)

• Craven underscores the VA’s progressivism, describing it as one of the closest things the US has to a fully public healthcare system.

  "Bernie really sort of saw what the VA was doing with veterans as proof of concept that... a more progressive, expansive federal government was possible... It does a pretty good job of providing socialized medicine, of bringing people out of poverty, of supporting them..." – Jasper Craven (05:23)

VA Targeted for Cuts and Outsourcing under Trump

• Kobach sets the stage: Recent years have seen the VA become a political battleground, with efforts to outsource care and cut staff raising deep concerns about future quality and access.
• Craven details how Trump’s first term established the playbook:
  • 2 major laws: VA Whistleblower Accountability Act (lowering civil service protections), The Mission Act (making it easier to outsource care)
  • Thousands of frontline healthcare staff were fired, demoted, or suspended, then the argument was made that the VA was failing, justifying further privatization and cuts

  "...He could sort of conjure these anecdotes into a broader sort of attack on this system and then sell as the panacea: private healthcare..." – Jasper Craven (11:54)

Comparison: Trump’s First vs. Second Term

• Craven: The second term represents an acceleration:

  “Trump sort of tested a lot of these programs out in the first term... In the first term, Trump very quickly managed to secure two big laws... a lot of work done in that first term to fire, demote, suspend thousands of frontline healthcare staff, and then... make the argument that, oh, the VA is weak... That sort of vicious cycle has been accelerated greatly in this second term.” – Jasper Craven (07:28)

Political Calculus: Why Target the VA?

• Kobach: Notes the political oddity of going after an agency connected to veterans—a politically sensitive group.

• Craven: Trump skillfully exploits isolated VA scandals (often remediated internally) to pitch privatization to the public. While the majority of veterans and Americans support expanding the VA, public perception is vulnerable to stories of mismanagement.

  “Trump... was able to take advantage of... isolated scandals... and then remediated by the agency. But he could sort of conjure these anecdotes into a broader sort of attack on this system and then sell as the panacea: private healthcare...” – Jasper Craven (11:54)

• Craven notes major private healthcare providers invest billions in marketing their services as superior, even as peer-reviewed evidence points to the VA often providing higher quality care with less wait time and no financial motive.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the VA as a Progressive Institution:

  "It does a pretty good job of providing socialized medicine, of bringing people out of poverty..." – Jasper Craven (05:23)

• On Political Narrative:

  "He could sort of conjure these anecdotes into a broader sort of attack on this system and then sell as the panacea: private healthcare..." – Jasper Craven (11:54)

• On Accelerating Cuts and Outsourcing:

  "...a lot of work done in that first term to fire, demote, suspend thousands of frontline healthcare staff, and then... make the argument that, oh, the VA is weak, the VA is struggling... and so we need to just send these veterans out to private providers." – Jasper Craven (07:28)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 – 01:36: Ads & Show Introduction
• 01:36 – 04:06: Will Kobach’s introduction and framing the VA’s role
• 04:06 – 06:40: Craven outlines the VA’s mission and “progressive” character
• 06:40 – 07:28: The recent exodus of staff and start of Trump’s VA reforms
• 07:28 – 09:12: First-term policies vs. second-term acceleration—major legislative changes
• 11:21 – 13:55: Political rationale for Trump targeting the VA; use of isolated scandals to shape the narrative for privatization
• 13:55 – 14:19: Reference to Phoenix scandal and systemic issues (teased, not fully covered in preview)

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Conclusion

This episode gives listeners a grounded understanding of the high stakes facing the VA as it undergoes rapid and dramatic change under recurrent Trump administration policies. The discussion highlights how policies, public perception, and political strategy intertwine, and underscores the essential but vulnerable place the VA holds in America’s public safety net. Craven brings historical, investigative depth, while Kobach steers the conversation for clarity and context—making this an essential listen (or read) for anyone interested in American governance, policy, and the mechanics of public-sector reform.

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Note: This summary covers content through the preview ending at 14:19 and does not include promotional or outro segments.

Transcript

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[Will Kobach]

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast. I'm your host today. Senior Editor Will Kbach A quick reminder up front. We are off this week for our annual break that we take usually around the start of spring, but we'll be back with our normal podcast and newsletter offerings on Monday, April 30. Now into today's interview. If you ask most Americans what the Department of Veterans affairs does, you'll probably hear some version of the same answer. It provides healthcare to veterans, and that's true, but it's only part of the story. The VA is actually one of the largest and most complex systems in the federal government. It delivers care and benefits to millions of veterans, funds cutting edge medical research, helps vets go to college, provides housing support, and in many ways serves as one of the closest things the US has to a fully public healthcare system. So what happens when that system starts to change. Over the past decade, and especially in recent years, the VA has become a political battleground. Policies aimed at outsourcing care to the private sector, combined with major staffing cuts and a growing wave of employee departures are raising serious questions about the future of the agency and the quality of care that its veterans receive. Now, the question that has been raised is whether this is all an effort to fix real problems. Alternatively, is it a quiet reshaping and a potential weakening of one of the most important public institutions that we have here in the US So today I wanted to talk to journalist Jasper Craven, who's been reporting deeply on the VA and the people inside of it. In our conversation, we break down what the VA actually does, why it's been targeted for reform and cuts in the second Trump administration, and what the recent exodus of staff could mean for the millions of veterans who rely on it. It's a great conversation, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all. So without further ado, here, here's my conversation with Jasper Craven. Jasper, thanks so much for joining the show.

[Jasper Craven]

Appreciate it.

[Will Kobach]

So, for our listeners who are newer to this issue or not, super familiar with the va, could you just start by giving us an overview of its core functions and its mission as it's set out by the agency?

[Jasper Craven]

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the VA and DOD are the two largest federal agencies in government, and VA really has a sprawling mission. Its chief role is to provide benefits and healthcare to about 9 million American veterans. But in addition, it oversees a number of other pretty progressive sort of edicts. It offers housing vouchers to homeless veterans. It has a massive research wing, medical research wing. It does, you know, job training. It has social workers. I mean, it has a massive police force, the third largest federal police force in America. But really, you know, sort of for the purposes of a layman, what's worth knowing is that VA delivers healthcare and benefits to handicapped veterans.

[Will Kobach]

Yeah.

When you say progressive, is that in a political sense?

[Jasper Craven]

Yeah, I'd argue. I mean, you know, there's obviously a lot of rhetoric and really has been that's sort of been the case since Bernie's run around Medicare for all and sort of like an expansive vision of government in which healthcare in particular is a public commodity. Bernie really sort of based his broad agenda around his many years working on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. He really sort of saw what the VA was doing with veterans as proof of concept that, you know, a sort of more progressive, expansive federal government was possible. Obviously, the VA is not perfect but it does a pretty good job of providing socialized medicine, of bringing people out of poverty, of, you know, supporting them for. I mean, the other thing I forgot to mention was, you know, the GI Bill and all of the work they do to support veterans going to college, subsidizing that. So, yeah, I mean, it's a very progressive agency in its mission. However, the last decade or so, that work has really been complicated.

[Will Kobach]

Yeah, that's what I want to turn to now. Your recent article in the American Prospect was the impetus for this conversation. And you talk about really a mass exodus of staff at the VA during Trump's second term, partially facilitated by the administration's actions of deliberately trying to reduce the headcount, but also in some cases by people who have worked there and feel like the quality of care or the quality of the work that they're doing is just declining to a point where they don't want to be involved with it anymore. You also note, though, that this was a target in Trump's first term as well. This isn't a new push for him. Could you just so we can kind of hold these two ideas at once, how does what Trump is doing now compare to what he was doing in his first term? Is it similar in scale and nature, or are there some differences there?

[Jasper Craven]

I would say that Trump sort of tested a lot of these programs out in the first term. I mean, VA really, you could argue, was sort of the lab in which DOGE was made. There were a lot of pretty intense, sustained attacks on VA personnel and programs during Trump's first term. And as we've seen, those have expanded extensively, both when it comes to VA programs, but also, you know, the litany of other attacks that have been waged across federal government. I mean, in the first term, Trump very quickly managed to secure two big laws concerning the va. One was called the VA Whistleblower Accountability act, and the other was the Mission Act. Without getting too into the weeds, basically what these allowed him to do was gut civil service protections for personnel at VA and then also establish new rules to outsource care more easily. And so there was a lot of work done in that first term to fire, demote, suspend thousands of frontline healthcare staff, and then from there to kind of make the argument that, oh, the VA is weak, the VA is struggling to secure appointments, and so we need to just send these veterans out to private providers. That sort of vicious cycle has been accelerated greatly in this second term.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy)]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[Will Kobach]

You write too, in your piece about how the VA has really been a target of Trump's, even going back to the campaign trail in his first in his 2016 presidential on one hand, that strikes me as a little surprising just from the outside because of its relations to veterans and feeling like that might be a little bit of a politically toxic position to hold. But talking about it more and a little bit of the progressive roots of the administration and some of the ways you're describing the changes that he's implemented. Can you give us a sense of why you think he's made it such a target across Both administrations now.

[Jasper Craven]

Yeah, well, it's a really good question because it is kind of, I mean, Trump on so many issues is able to thread all of these political needles and sort of choose unpopular political opinions, but make them palatable to his base. I mean, what Trump understood brilliantly about the va, again is that while veterans on the whole in polling support the va, want it expanded, want it preserved, want to keep getting their healthcare at the va, there are issues that emerge, as with any healthcare system, and the VA is very accountable, unlike private healthcare. There is an inspector general, there are two congressional committees, there is Department of Justice. There is just a lot of scrutiny on va. And so what Trump was able to sort of take advantage of in his first term were a series of isolated scandals, incidents at various hospitals, virtually all of which were identified and then remediated by the agency. But you know, he could sort of conjure these anecdotes into a broader sort of attack on this system and then sell as the panacea. Private healthcare, which, you know, to many VA patients is something they don't really experience. You know, they've been in the va, they enjoy it, and yet private healthcare is spending billions on marketing to make their systems sound incredible. The truth of the matter is that wait times are longer in the private sector, quality is less, there's no financial motive, there's reams and reams of peer reviewed evidence and respectable scientific journals backing this up. But Trump sort of expertly dangled this new idea around choice and private care and everything else, and so he was able to build the sort of political momentum to get these things done.

[Will Kobach]

You mentioned a specific example that he hinged on, which was in Phoenix, I believe, during that first campaign. Could you just run us through that example? And then also I'm curious, were any of these issues that he was highlighting indicative of some more systemic issues at the VA that needed to be addressed? Or do you think that they were more on this one off easily remediated side?

[John Law]

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[Max Rushton]

All.

[John Law]

Peace.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Mull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing editor Ari Weitzman with Senior editor Will Kobach and Associate editors Audrey Moorehead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at Readtangle.

[Hayden]

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[Hayden]

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[Will Kobach]

Spoiler alert.

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He'll be wrong.

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