ARE THOSE LEAVING THE WHITE HOUSE LIKE RATS LEAVING A SINKING SHIP?

…Press Secretary Sean Spicer made one of the earlier White House exits

 

After 13 months, the president has failed to make good on many of his campaign promises.

 

President Trump set a record for White House staff turnover in his first year. At the end of this article is the list of those that have left the Trump administration:  The list includes those that were fired, those that resigned under pressure and those that resigned for various differences with the president and for personal reasons.  The number to date is 38, but that is as of March 1^st.  There could be more starting from the next day.

 

As you will recall, President Trump promised many things as a candidate in 2016.

 

He promised to “drain the swamp” and that he would appoint “only the best people”. He would also be “a dealmaker par excellence”.

 

But after 13 months in office, he has yet to fulfill much on those promises.

 

The president said that his business skills and outsider status would allow him to make the changes that the nation’s capital needed.

 

However, all we’ve seen from him so far is that his running a private, family business is far different from running the #1 democratic government.  If this were a college course, the president would be given a failing grade.

 

Trump’s personnel instincts have been seriously faulty and they have deliberately generated national instability.

 

Trump's word as a dealmaker has been unreliable. His relationships with his own Cabinet members have been fraught with comments that should never come from the mouth of a US President.  A case in point, is the latest sharp jab at his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. But his tweets may be the least of the problems that have afflicted his management of the government.

 

For the Republicans, the disorder with this presidency has been a source of constant distraction, even though he has proved more agreeable to advancing real conservative policies than some might have imagined.

 

That he has been more conventionally conservative than his campaign suggested, that has kept the Republicans from serious rebellions .  The fact that Trump has bent the party to his will and enjoys strong support among the GOP base has surprised many in both parties.

 

However, Trump’s learning curve continues to be very steep. Mistakes began in the first week after his election with personnel decisions during the transition that have haunted his presidency ever since. He stacked the White House personnel in a way that guaranteed constant tension. He brought many into his administration who have proved to be more than just "ethically challenged". Infighting and volatility have been the defining features of his presidency to date.  (And Trump seems to like it that way…?)

 

The latest announced resignation of White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, hardly qualifies as being out of the ordinary in an administration in which chaos is par for the course. 

 

Yet the Hicks departure is much more significant than some of the other exits.

 

Hope was one of the president’s closest confidants and the most trusted advisers.  She was also a political novice, like Trump, but who had earned his trust. Hicks’s resignation came the day after she spent hours testifying on Capitol Hill about Russian interference in the 2016 election, the indication that the two were related was that Trump berated her because of what she had told the investigating committee about her telling "white lies" to cover the president.

 

Hope was the one individual that had been expected to stay through at least a full term, or even beyond.

 

But now with her gone, the president will be surrounded by only one or two  genuine Trump loyalists outside of his family. And the controversies surrounding son-in-law Jared Kushner, who just lost his top-secret clearance, leave him in a weakened position to do the jobs he was assigned.

 

The upheaval in the Trump White House is without precedent in a modern White House scene, and there is no assurance that it is anywhere near being over. In just this first year, the team that came in with the president has been totally shredded.

 

Just look at the level of those that have left. 

 

Trump has now turned over a chief of staff, a chief strategist, two deputy chiefs of staff, a national security adviser, two deputy national security advisers, a staff secretary, a longtime personal aide and a deputy assistant to the president who was a foreign policy adviser. He also fired an FBI director and an acting attorney general and we saw a Cabinet officer that resigned in scandal.

 

The wreckage has been especially a problem in the communications operation. Five people who have held the title of Communications Director have come and gone. Two others with communications responsibilities in other White House offices have or are departing. When the president is the chief and most unpredictable communicator in the White House, the role of communications director becomes the most unrewarding job in the White House.

 

This roller-coaster ride Trump has led continues to take a major toll. Beyond the changes in personnel, he has been a frustrated non-dealmaker. He was not able to find a formula with congressional Republicans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and remains bitter at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who he blames for sinking a very poor Senate health care bill that probably would only have barely passed.

 

Trump is now engaged in the issues of guns and school safety in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting that left 17 students and teachers dead.  He shocked Democrats and Republicans alike by asserting that he will consider raising the age limit for purchasing a long gun from 18 to 21, among other changes he supports.  But it's sounding that he will probably back down on supporting those items.

 

This is the president who has said it’s sometimes necessary to take on the National Rifle Association. But an NRA spokeswoman said that here is no daylight between the organization and the president, so which is it?  No one has a clue if he will be able to make a deal, so we must all just stay tuned.

 

Hovering over all this is the Russia investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller. The president remains unhappy as to where this is heading and whether others are in legal jeopardy remains unclear to all except Mueller and his team.

 

But the investigation adds something highly unsettling to the atmosphere of a White House that has been in trouble from the start, and it is under the leadership of a president who has no clue about being the US President.

 

So, after a single year in office, we are now able to see the real mess we are all in.

 

The following is a list of all of the individuals that have left the Trump administration, and this White House exodus is not expected to stop anytime soon:

 

Fired

 

·       Sally Yates. Deputy attorney general. Refused to enforce Trump’s entry ban.

·       Preet Bharara. U.S. attorney. Part of purge of U.S. attorneys.

·       James B. Comey. FBI director. Allegedly pressured by Trump to scale down investigations.

·       Rich Higgins. Director, NSC. Fired after writing a conspiracy-filled memo.

·       Derek Harvey. Senior director, NSC.  Fired following power shift under national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

·       Anthony Scaramucci. Communications director.  Fired by Kelly.

 

Resigned under pressure

 

·       Michael Flynn. National security adviser. Ostensibly fired for having misled Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

·       Katie Walsh. Deputy chief of staff.  Moved out of administration to work for a pro-Trump PAC.

·       K.T. McFarland. Deputy national security adviser. Pushed out following power shift under McMaster.

·       Tera Dahl. Deputy chief of staff, NSC. Reassigned following power shift under McMaster.

·       Michael Short. Assistant press secretary. Scaramucci told media that Short would be fired.

·       Reince Priebus. Chief of staff. Resigned in favor of Kelly.

·       Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Senior director, NSC  Resigned following power shift under McMaster.

·       Stephen K. Bannon. Chief strategist.  Bannon left after giving a negative interview to American Prospect.

·       Sebastian Gorka. Deputy assistant. Butted heads with Kelly.

·       William Bradford. Director, Energy. Past racist comments were made public.

·       Tom Price. Director of Health and Human Services. Under fire for taking expensive charter flights.

·       Jamie Johnson. Director, DHS. Past racist comments were made public.

·       Carl Higbie. Chief of external affairs, Corporation for National and Community Service. Past racist comments were made public.

·       Omarosa Manigault. Director of communications, Office of Public Liaison. Resigned to “pursue other opportunities.” Now stars on CBS’s “Big Brother.”

·       Taylor Weyeneth. Deputy chief of staff, Office of Drug Control Policy. Questions about experience and details on résumé.

·       Rob Porter. Staff secretary. Allegations of spousal abuse became public.

 

Resigned

 

·       Michael Dubke. Communications director.  Personal reasons.

·       Walter Shaub. Director of Office of Government Ethics. Concern over ethics rules.

·       Mark Corallo. Legal team spokesman. Apparently concerned about handling of Trump Tower story.

·       Sean Spicer. Press secretary. Uncomfortable with hiring of Scaramucci

·       Elizabeth Southerland. Director, EPA. Disagreement with direction of department.

·       Carl Icahn. Special adviser. Resigned in advance of an article about conflicts of interest.

·       George Sifakis. Public liaison director. Sifakis was an ally of Priebus.

·       Maliz Beams. Counselor, State. Reported differences with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

·       Elizabeth Shackelford. Political officer, State. Disagreement with direction of department.

·       Paul Winfree. Deputy director. Returning to Heritage Foundation.

·       Dina Powell. Deputy national security adviser. Personal reasons.

·       Jeremy Katz. Deputy director, NEC. Personal reasons.

·       Thomas Shannon. Under secretary of state for political affairs. (Resignation announced but not yet in force.) Personal reasons.

·       John Feeley. Ambassador to Panama. Disagreement with administration.

·       Rick Dearborn. Deputy chief of staff. Joining private sector.

·       Hope Hicks.  Director of Communications, Personal Reasons

 

There has never been a presidential administration that’s seen so much turnover, particularly among members of the senior White House staff.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018