‘Trump Hangover’ Still Impacts Him

• Dr. Jerome Adams, his wife Lacey, shared how the Trump Effect has affected their lives.
• Dr. Adams stated that people don’t want “to touch anything” related to Trump in an interview with WaPo
• This summer, Lacey Adams was diagnosed with melanoma. It was her third battle against skin cancer.

In 2017, when  Dr. Jerome Adams was nominated to serve as surgeon general by then-President Donald Trump, he envisioned focusing on opioid addiction, an important public health issue that had impacted members of his family.

Lacey Adams, Dr. Adams’ wife was not a fan of Trump. She expressed concern about her husband being labeled a “stigma” for his decision to serve in the Administration. But the anesthesiologist assured her that he would be able to perform work that would benefit Americans if he assumed the role of surgeon general, rather than looking through a window.

Jerome and Lacey Adams would prefer to focus on public health issues, as Lacey this past summer battled melanoma — a serious skin cancer — for the third time; both have been vocal about skin-cancer prevention on social media in their efforts to help others.

In a Washington Post profile, the couple discussed the challenges of overcoming the Trump Effect. They said that their lives have been deeply affected since last year’s resignation of the surgeon general.

The Post was told by Dr. Adams that Adams is “a force that really takes the air out of a room.”

He continued to state that “The Trump hangover” is still affecting him in “significant ways”, and added that “it will make things more difficult for myself” with the new 2024 presidential campaign launched by Trump.

It took Dr. Adams eight months to find another job after he left his position as surgeon general. This was a worrying situation for the couple, who needed to provide support for their three children.

Lacey Adams said that it was much harder than he expected to find a landing place because of Trump Effect. (Dr. Adams revealed Twitter: His wife will have surgery this week.

He also said that people still fear to touch anything associated Trump.

The newspaper reported that the former surgeon-general said that he was not complaining, but wanted to offer “context” for the situation.

In September 2021, Dr. Adams was hired by Purdue University President Mitch Daniels — a one-time director of the Office of Management and Budget and former Indiana governor — to serve as the university’s executive director of health equity initiatives. Adams is also an outstanding professor of pharmacy practice at the university’s departments of Pharmacy Practice, Public Health.

During an interview with Insider last year, Dr. Adams — one of the most prominent figures on the White House coronavirus task force in 2020 — lamented the partisanship that came to envelop his time in the administration, when he sought to boost the health outcomes of individuals who were most vulnerable in contracting the disease during its peak.

“In February and March 2020, I spoke with the NAACP as well as the National Medical Association to raise awareness that COVID-19 would disproportionately affect Black and Brown people. I spoke with groups about how the virus would impact people in poor health, as well as those from lower socioeconomic classes. It was quite heartbreaking to see it unfold the way it did,” he said to Insider.

“It was frustrating because, in many cases the pitch wasn’t heard the way that I wanted it to, because people only saw Trump standing beside me. They didn’t see the Black man, who overcame many obstacles to become a doctor despite growing up in poverty and rural areas. They didn’t see the man who dedicated his entire career to fighting for health equity. He said that they saw Trump’s surgeon general and that made people dismiss, dismiss or just distrust what I had to say in that space.”