"This is a great place to work" This is what Donald Trump said while referring to the White
House in early March 2018, hours before his chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn’s resignation
became public.
At any other time, this phrase wouldn’t have been special, it wouldn’t have called
anybody’s attention.
After all, the White House, and I don’t think this will surprise anyone, is one of
the most sought-after places in the world to work.
Having a job as part of the president's team means power, influence and recognition.
However, my friends, wait a moment, because we are forgetting a very important detail:
Who the US president is, and how he is.
As you know quite well, in the Trump dictionary, the term "usual"... doesn’t exist.
Don’t believe me?
Well, listen up.
(TURBULENCE IN THE WEST WING)
In January 2017, the 23 most important people in the West Wing of the White House were sworn
in.
That is, the people who would make up the team closest to the president: the chief of
staff, press secretary, national security advisor, director of communications, etc.,
etcetera.
You know, all those people we usually see next to the president in TV shows and movies.
Of course...
Donald isn’t Josiah Bartlet and surviving in his administration is becoming more difficult
than setting up a business in Nicolás Maduro's Venezuela.
Wait...
You don’t know who Josiah Bartlet is?
Haven’t you seen The West Wing, the TV series?
Well, if you haven’t and you like politics, don’t waste another minute.
But... let's stay on track, back to Donald Trump’s White House.
Do you know how many out of the 23 people who formed the President's Praetorian Guard
when his term began, are still in office today?
Well... out of 23... only 9 are still in their posts... and many of those 9 are on the line.
Ok, you may be thinking…
maybe he didn’t choose right…
I mean… anyone can make a mistake…
Well… the problem is that that’s not the case at all.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a researcher at the Brookings Institute, one of the most important think
tanks in Washington, is following the changes that are taking place almost every week in
the President’s Executive Office very closely.
If we take all the appointed positions into account, plus those who’ve been replaced,
dismissed, or who resigned, as well as the people who worked for them, in total, since
the time this episode was made, 65 people have been part of the President’s Office.
That’s a 48% turnover rate.
To explain this more clearly, in just over a year, half of the people who were part of
the team are no longer in office.
This is an unprecedented rotation rate:
the scandals, disagreements with the president or, simply, the Oval Office tenant’s mood
swings have led working in the West Wing to become a high-risk profession.
By comparison, layoffs, resignations and changes are happening at a speed 3 times greater than
in the Obama Administration and 2 times that in Reagan’s, who used to hold the record.
Honestly, I'm not exaggerating.
This is crazy!
In just over a year, and listen up because we aren’t talking about small posts, Trump
has had 2 press secretaries, 2 Chiefs of Staff, 2 National Security Advisors and 5 different
people have been appointed as Director of Communications.
In this time Donald Trump has even fired his lawyers.
And what’s worse… based on the available information, things seem to be heading in
an even worse direction.
For example, the National Security Adviser, General McMaster, has just been fired and
everything points to the fact that General John Kelly, his current Chief of Staff, will
follow his footsteps in a very short time.
( “Trump Has Decided to Remove His National Security Adviser”)
Donald Trump chose them, but it looks like he didn’t like them that much afterward...
So, with this scenario in mind, we can understand why many of his team members, based on what
they confessed, spend a great deal of time trying not to provoke a president who gets
angry very, very easily.
Can you imagine Trump walking the White House halls, saying “you’re fired”… well…
it seems like this isn’t far from the truth.
Yes, it seems like Trump really took his position in the Apprentice, the popular reality TV
show where he was famous for ‘firing’ contestants, to heart.
("It's devastating.
No business could handle this, much less the government.
It's supposed to be about stability and continuity.
That's just not in his lexicon."
William M. Daley, former President Barack Obama's chief of staff.)
But okay, you may be wondering… what is really going on?
Why are there so many changes?
Well, there are many reasons…
Some have had to leave due to scandals, such as the National Security Advisor, Michael
T. Flynn or
the Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who resigned after domestic abuse allegations.
This was also Bannon’s case...
Until August 2017, he was Donald Trump’s right hand in his political career, but not
even that saved him.
Known for his highly nationalist positions, Steve Bannon was named Senior Counselor to
the President and Chief Strategist of the White House.
Well, after a little over 6 months, Trump decided to kick him out.
In the end, Bannon stepped forward and submitted a forced resignation.
Others, such as the economic adviser and former Goldman Sachs executive, Gary Cohn or Press
Secretary Sean Spicer, left because of their disagreements with the president.
And others were directly fired:
("Trump's Personal Assistant, John McEntee, Fired Over Security Issue" WSJ.)
Then there are cases such as, for example, Omarosa Manigault, who until December 2017
was Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public
Liaison.
See, Omarosa was basically known for participating in television reality shows, one of which
was the Apprentice, where she met Donald Trump, and thanks to that she became part of the
president's team when he arrived at the White House.
Well, in December 2017 she suddenly "resigned" stating that she’d seen very strange things
that had made her feel very uncomfortable and had affected her emotionally.
Do you know what she did after resigning?
She joined the Celebrity Big Brother, where she’s been airing all the surrealist dirty
rags that she witnessed as a White House employee.
Man, Trump really has a good eye for recruiting (ironic)… and that was actually what he
presumed to be one of his strengths… choosing people to accompany and work for him.
Really good job!
But... okay, some of you may be thinking…
yes, Simon, the thing with his West Wing team has gotten a bit out of hand…. but at the
governmental level, that is with his secretaries, things must be different.
Well... it doesn’t seem so…
(THE CABINET)
The cabinet, the body that makes up the main positions of the US Government, hasn’t been
saved from the Trump earthquake either.
See, in June 2017, the first meeting was held with the entire cabinet.
At that time, Trump publicly stated that he had assembled an extraordinary group of talents
to form his government.
Well, to say the least, things have changed.
Since then, there have been 6 cabinet rotations, that’s more than George Bush had in his
two terms and more than half than Obama had, in a single year!
Of these 6 changes, incidentally, 4 were redundant dismissals or "resignations":
That of Reince Priebus, Tom Price, David Shulkin - and lastly, the most surreal of all, Rex
Tillerson, Secretary of State and previously powerful CEO of Exxon Mobile, the largest
oil company in the United States.
Rex Tillerson, my friends, was fired through Twitter!
Trump didn’t even tell him in person.
In fact, it’s rumored that, skipping the President’s orders, John Kelly, Trump's
Chief of Staff called Tillerson who was touring Africa, to tell him that the President was
going to kick him out, and that he needed to return to Washington and consider resigning.
It isn’t clear if Tillerson didn’t want to, didn’t believe him or didn’t have
the time, but the fact is that Trump fulminated him on Twitter.
Now bets on who the next candidate on the Donald Trump target list will be, grows like
foam.
Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing, Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, Scott Pruitt, Director
of the Environmental Protection Agency and the powerful Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General,
are the big favorites for firing.
By the way, the latter, the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is being blamed, by Trump,
for not having halted the investigations on the Russian interference issue in the presidential
elections that led him to the White House.
Trump is fed up.
He knows very well who the president is, and that he and only he is the boss.
(Ironically ->) What are they thinking?
How can the FBI or Justice Department officials try to investigate him?
How dare they?
Independence?
Nonsense.
And don’t forget, dear viewers, that Trump is a really proactive dude when it comes to
those who try to investigate him.
That’s why he has fired James Comey and Andrew McCabe, former FBI directors.
And for that same reason, he stated that Robert Mueller, the special counsel who’s investigating
Russia's interference in the elections, is next to be fired.
Something that even made a Republican senator, Jeff Flake, from Arizona, publicly warn the
President about his possible dismissal.
You heard that right.
( “We are begging the President not to fire the special counsel.
Don't create a constitutional crisis.
Congress cannot preempt such a firing.
Our only constitutional remedy is after the fact, through impeachment.
No one wants that outcome.
Mr. President, please don't go there.”
– Jeff Flake
Well my friends, these are the reasons why working in the Trump Administration is becoming
less attractive, even for Republicans.
(“There isn’t a huge appetite from many Republicans on the outside to explore job
opportunities in this administration,” Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for Mitt Romney)
By the way, have you noticed these processes’ main consequences?
Who will want to work in this administration?
Think about it for a moment, if you had a good job,what would it take for you to risk
it?
Would you put your reputation and your professional career on the line to work in an administration
like this, where you could be fired tomorrow through a Tweet?
I’m sure that, for many of you, the answer would be NO.
So a possible consequence of Trump’s practices is that the Trump Administration will end
up working like a kind of vacuum cleaner, sucking up whomever it can find and filling
itself with not-so-good profiles
Anyway, that's how things are in Washington...
And keep in mind that Trump has only been in the White House for a year!
But now it's your turn, who do you think will be the next to lose an important post?
Leave your answer in the comments.
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Also, don’t forget to check out our friends at the Reconsider Media Podcast - they provided
the vocals in this episode that were not mine!
And as always, thanks for watching!