When Donald Trump left office, former Surgeon General Jerome Adams and his wife, Lacey Adams were in for some terrible times. Both were clearly hindered by what has become known, over time, as the Trump Effect and this was a struggle for Adams, who has a BA and a BS from the University of Maryland (Baltimore County), an MD from Indiana University (Indianapolis), and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.

With this many degrees, you’d think that Adams would find a position in academia quite easily. But, according to The New York Post, that’s not what happened.

“People are still afraid to touch anything that is associated with Trump,” Adams told The Washington Post in an interview published on Friday.

As he looked for jobs at universities, the couple recalled receiving polite rejections from university officials who were nervous about the effect of having a former Trump administration might affect the typically left-leaning student body.

Per The Washington Post, Adams recalled that Trump is “a force that really does take the air out of the room. The Trump hangover is still impacting me in significant ways,” he said, adding that if Trump runs again in 2024, “this will make things more difficult for me.”

During the interview, Lacey Adams said she “hated Trump,” and was completely against her husband working in the administration. She worried about the “stigma” this new job would create for her husband.

“It was a lot harder than he thought to find a landing spot because of the Trump Effect,” she said.

Jerome Adams finally found that landing spot, after being unemployed from January 2021 until September of that year, when Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana, offered him a position as the executive director of health equity initiatives at the university.

But what’s really sad about this is that Lacey was diagnosed, once again, with cancer. She was diagnosed with melanoma 12 years ago and she’s fought a major battle with the disease but come out on top more than once. Let’s hope she does this again. Neither support Trump and the couple was hoping to educate the public on skin cancer awareness, but for them, that’s been derailed by the former president’s announcement that he will run again.

Let’s hope he loses and Lacey wins.