TRUMP HAS HAD AN 86% WHITE HOUSE TURN-OVER, THE MOST EVER

…Former White House Chief-of-Staff, John Kelly, being welcomed by the president

“The current turn-over has far surpassed presidents from Reagan through Obama.”

Trump had had many personnel breakups.  General Jim Mattis is just one of the many official to go from hero to zero in the president’s telling

First, President Trump called Jim Mattis “one of the most effective generals and extraordinary leaders of our time.”

Now, he says his former secretary of defense “is the world’s most overrated General.”

John Kelly was once a “great Homeland Security secretary” who would be an even better White House chief of staff, “if that’s possible”

This week, Trump said Kelly is an also-ran who “was not in my inner-circle, was totally exhausted by the job, and in the end just slinked away into obscurity.”

(BTW: being in Trump’s ‘inner circle’, means, “being in Trump’s direct family”.

Jeff Sessions had entered the administration being hailed by the president as “a world class legal mind” who was “greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him.”

Trump now demeans him as someone who “didn’t have a clue,” “let our Country down,” “was played like a drum” and “is not to be trusted by Alabama voters weighing whether to return him to the Senate”.

Let’s also not forget how Rex Tillerson went from being Trump’s “embodiment of the American dream” whose “tenacity, broad experience and deep understanding of geopolitics make him an excellent choice for Secretary of State” to “‘dumb as a rock’ and according to the president: “totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State.”

There are a number constants at the core of the Trump administration, which has had far more staff departures than any former president.  But the rule of thumb with Trump is that if you speak ill of Trump, and many former officials have, the president is guaranteed to strike back.  That’s why so many Republicans are scared stiff for not up-setting the president.

Obviously, this is a pattern that raises serious questions about his ability to fill some of the most important posts in government.  And it is why he continually hires top, qualified individuals that he later comes to describe as incompetents.  The truth is that the president is the incompetent one.

Some Senate Republicans who had previously supported the former defense secretary Mattis, have since changed their tune after he spoke out against President Trump.

If these individuals were such incompetents, why were they hired in the first place?  If Trump didn’t know enough about them, why weren’t they properly vetted?

The answer is that when they did the right thing, that Trump didn’t like, that’s when they became, “Trump’s stooges”.

Trump’s Former aides, who are finally able to tell the truth, they say the answer for why the president goes after so many of his officials is that Trump can’t stand any public dissent or criticism.  He gets really pissed-off and he grows frustrated when aides push back on his many impulses. His current White House staff obviously refuses to comment on this fact.

“You can never stay on good terms with him forever unless you’re willing to defend every single thing he does,” said one former official.

The spectacle of Trump harshly denouncing his former aides, and those same aides so publicly criticizing his performance as president, this is unprecedented among any former presidents.

“President Trump’s approach to personnel management resembles that of a rich man who disowns his relatives because they do not show him proper deference or respect,” said Rutgers University political science professor Ross K. Baker. “Anyone who works for him appears to need to adhere to a kind of unwritten non-disclosure agreement. Breaching that agreement even in a minor way brings the president’s wrath down on them.”

Obviously, the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

While Trump’s feuds with some former aides, such as former communications director Anthony Scaramucci and former adviser Omarosa Manigault, these feuds seem more like colorful moments in a less-than-functional  presidency.  Trump’s feuds with General’s Mattis and Kelly could be more politically perilous.

Both of these men were seen early on as proof that Trump could attract top talent to his administration, and their appointments stopped the fear among congressional Republicans about who would fill key administration spots. These men were also participants in sensitive discussions about some of the most important national security decisions of the Trump presidency.

A senior administration official said that the view inside the West Wing is that Mattis’s statement this week won’t damage the president with swing voters by itself.  These feuds do show a vulnerability for other Republicans who previously have not criticized the president that may now be moved to do so.

Of course, as usual, the official, who spoke on this subject, did so on the condition of anonymity to describe these internal discussions.  He also said Trump’s tendency to fire, or part ways with people unceremoniously, this leads to them leveling potentially politically damaging criticism. There has been an effort in recent months to keep officials Trump has been angered with, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, “inside the tent.”  As an example, as Trump parted ways with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but he bit his tongue to keep from having an acrimonious situation like he had had with John Kelly.

Trump acknowledged that he’s aware of the problem posed by having bad relations with former officials.

“I learned a lot from Richard Nixon. Don’t fire people,” Trump told Fox News.

But he hasn’t learned that much from Richard Nixon.

Some aides are concerned that Mattis may have also given other former officials more reason to speak out ahead of the 2020 election, including Tillerson and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster.  Kelly could also be more explicit about what he witnessed as chief of staff, and he has been wrestling with what to do, according to people who have spoken with him.

Mattis’s scalding critique last week of the president’s handling of protests across the country following the murder of George Floyd, this has already had some political impact.  One GOP senator, Lisa Mukowski of Alaska has suggested that she may not vote for Trump this fall.

“General Mattis’s comments yesterday, I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up,” Sen. Murkowski said.

One problem for the White House staff is that there is such a large pool of former officials who could speak out, if they chose. Trump’s staff turnover rate is currently 86%, after slightly less than 3½ years in office. Institution.

For the sake of comparison, after four full years in office, President George W. Bush had 63% turnover among his most senior aides.

“The current level has far surpassed presidents from Reagan through Obama,” with Trump far exceeding his five most recent predecessors after the entirety of their first terms.

Democrats are trying to take advantage of this sense of chaos after the latest comments from Mattis and Kelly.

Trump’s Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, released a video ad Friday reprising criticism of Trump from retired senior military leaders.

General Kelly’s quote from earlier in the day is the kicker: “We need to look harder at who we elect.”

Lindsay Graham had said that Mattis was “Somewhere between Ronald Reagan and the Pope”, before Mattis crossed Trump.  And many Republicans were previously giddy over Mattis.

Trump blasted both Mattis and Kelly this past week after they criticized his handling of the recent unrest and street protests that gripped the country.  Mattis called Trump, “a threat to the Constitution and its system of checks and balances”. On Friday, Kelly said he agreed with Mattis.

Trump has also gone through several national security advisers, and none of their departures were without controversy or hard feelings.

After John Bolton left, Trump claimed the man he hired was “holding him back” on key foreign policy initiatives. Trump said later that Bolton, who claims he resigned last fall, was “very publicly terminated,” and only interested in selling a book.  Bolton has written that tell-all book, but he is fighting with the White House, just to get it publish.

The impulse to denigrate and humiliate is part of Trump’s political biography.  Who could forget those members of the 2016 Republican presidential primary, where he added those insulting nicknames: “Little Marco” Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz that had shocked many of the voters.  Having vanquished those Republican senators from Florida and Texas and the rest of the field, Trump moved on to “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, a moniker he continues to use for that Democratic nominee he defeated.

Mattis drew laughs last year when he mocked Trump’s insults during a charity dinner, a day after Trump had called him “the world’s most overrated general.”

“I’m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress,” Mattis said, referring to the famed performer.

“So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals and frankly, that sounds pretty good to me. And you do have to admit between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.”

Trump and his defenders have seriously gone after Mattis in recent days, calling him “out of touch” but not engaging in much debate about Mattis’s constitutional arguments regarding deploying active-duty military within the United States to quell protests.

“It’s obvious that the general doesn’t have a clue what’s going on in the American cities out there, or is he actually worse, turned a blind eye to it,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox News.

But anyone that has followed Mr. Gidley, knows how much he brown noses up to the president.

Kelly has kept his criticism somewhat veiled. Last week, he said he strongly disagreed with the idea of deploying the military on American streets, as Trump has said he is considering in response to protests.

“No president, ever, is a dictator or a king,” and presidents must be checked by Congress and the courts, Kelly said, by way of agreeing with Mattis’s overall critique.

“I think we need to look harder at who we elect. I think we should start… all of us, regardless of what our views are on politics… I think we should look at people that are running for office and put them through the filter of, ‘What is their character like? What are their ethics? Are they willing if they are elected to represent all of their constituents, not just the base?’ ” Kelly said.

He also acknowledged his tension with Trump before he left the White House in January 2019.

Anthony Scaramucci  was fired by John Kelly as one of Kelly’s first jobs as Trump’s Chief of Staff.  Scaramucci had lasted less than two weeks on the White House staff and he has thanked Kelly for the firing saying it saved his career and his marriage.

Of course, Trump hasn’t liked any of Scaramucci’s comments.  Per the president: “Anthony Scaramucci is a highly unstable ‘nut job’ ” who had also supported other candidates during the 2016 primary.  Trump had tweeted this in August 2019. “I barely knew him until his 11 days of gross incompetence-made a fool of himself, bad on TV.”

Hopefully, the 2020 election will have much different results than 2016

Copyright G. Ater 2020