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West Wing infighting has ripple effects across the government
Top-level vacancies frustrate Trump's administration
THE BIG IDEA: The continuing intrigue inside the West Wing is so much more than just a wild soap opera. Whoever has Donald Trump’s ear at any given time has immense power over the trajectory of this country. Another consequence of the dueling power centers is that it’s taking longer than usual to staff up the executive branch.
Lisa Rein has a fascinating story on the front page of today’s paper about Cabinet secretaries who are growing increasingly exasperated with how slowly the White House is moving to fill top-tier posts. They believe the vacancies in their departments are hobbling efforts to oversee basic government operations and promote Trump’s agenda.
It turns out that one important explanation for the sluggish process is that lots of people inside the White House have veto power over who gets even junior jobs. Trump, who fancies himself a decisive leader, is in many ways governing by committee, something Republicans often attacked Barack Obama for.
'Prospective nominees … must win approval from competing camps inside the White House,' Lisa explains. 'Around the table for weekly hiring meetings are chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, representing the populist wing; Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, leading the establishment Republican wing; White House Counsel Don McGahn; Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Josh Peacock; and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, representing a business-oriented faction. ... For economic appointments, Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, also sits in, as does the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, when a hiring decision piques her interest.'
With so many people able to nix nominees, it is inevitable that well-qualified people will be knocked out of contention for reasons big and small.
Consider this remarkable statistic: 'The Senate has confirmed 26 of Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and other top posts. But for 530 other vacant senior-level jobs requiring Senate confirmation, the president has advanced just 37 nominees. That’s less than half the nominees Obama had sent to the Senate by this point in his first term.'
-- This inefficient process is driving some secretaries nuts. Seven Washington Post beat reporters, fanned out across town, helped Lisa illustrate the government-wide frustration. Here are some of the most memorable illustrations from her story:
...Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has routinely peppered the White House Personnel Office for updates and called Trump directly to press for faster action on filling vacant jobs.
...HHS Secretary Tom Price aired his dismay at a recent breakfast with former congressional colleagues. “He’s very frustrated,” said a Republican House member who was there.
...Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of the Senate Majority Leader, has become so impatient that she has tapped an outside consultant to help identify contenders for the top jobs and shepherd them through the White House nomination process.
...EPA chief Scott Pruitt has been pushing coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler for his agency’s No. 2 job, but the White House has still not signed off two months later.
At the Education Department, Secretary Betsy DeVos is leaning heavily on the staff of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to compensate for her depleted senior ranks: 'She had backed New Mexico Education Secretary Hanna Skandera for assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, but the White House soured on her after some Senate Republicans raised concerns about her support for Common Core standards,' Lisa reports.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis withdrew his top choice for undersecretary for policy in March after the White House told him it would not fight an expected battle for Senate confirmation for retired senior diplomat Anne Patterson: “While the president has since named several candidates for senior defense positions, the policy post, arguably the most important person on the secretary’s team, is still held by an acting career official. Mattis has skirmished with the White House over other appointments as well and told colleagues he is frustrated by the delays, especially since he had insisted on being able to choose his team.”
-- The president himself is keenly interested in certain appointments, especially when it comes to choosing the federal prosecutors in his hometown, which also slows the process. From Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Josh Dawsey: “Trump removed almost all of the sitting, Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys in a Friday afternoon purge in March, in a highly unusual move that’s left federal prosecutors’ offices under the supervision of acting U.S. attorneys since then. As with other political appointments, the Trump White House has been slow to fill the vacancies. … None are more important to him than the U.S. attorney posts in Manhattan and Brooklyn … which are known for handling white-collar crime cases … The Manhattan office, which oversees the Southern District of New York, was previously headed by Preet Bharara, who was the only U.S. attorney fired in March, after he refused to resign. He’d visited Trump Tower in November, after the election, and had said that Trump promised him he’d be able to remain in his post. White House officials and outside advisers with a crucial say in the picks, like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, are still talking to candidates for the two New York jobs.”
Trump, flanked by members of his Cabinet, holds up a newly-signed executive order. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
THE NARRATIVE ON DAY 97:
-- As Trump nears the 100-day mark, his administration is scrambling to show the patina of progress. Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker and Sean Sullivan report: 'Trump has called Saturday’s 100-day marker … an ‘artificial’ construct, and he is not incorrect. Yet the kinetic energy emanating from the West Wing, which at times borders on frenetic, reveals a White House eager to cross the threshold with some tangible wins. … The whirlwind of activity this week seems aimed at demonstrating forward momentum from a young administration criticized for a lack of signature legislative achievements — a sense that doing something, anything, is better than the perception of stagnation. ... Trump, more than any modern president before him, runs his White House like a television drama, believing that sometimes projecting an image of energy and progress is as important, if not more so, than the reality.'
Trump signs executive order: ‘I won’t bother reading everything’
-- Three new stories raise questions about the COMPETENCE of some of the people Trump has hired:
1. The White House included inaccurate historical information, which an aide admits was simply pulled from the Internet and not checked independently in a press release designed to make Trump look more successful than he’s been: A fact sheet said that he’s “accomplished more in his first 100 days than any other president since Franklin Roosevelt.” Prima facie, that’s obviously not true. But the basis for the claim is that Trump will have signed 30 executive orders during his first 100 days. The White House said in its release that Roosevelt signed just nine executive orders during his first 100 days. “In reality, Roosevelt signed 99 executive orders in his first 100 days, or more than three times Trump’s tally,” Fact Checker Glenn Kessler reports. “A White House official acknowledged the count for Roosevelt’s executive orders was wrong.”
2. Trump’s inaugural committee also admitted that a list of donors that it submitted to the FEC was riddled with errors. A crowd-sourced reporting project led by HuffPost’s Christina Wilkie asked the public to examine more than 1,500 listings of individual donors and their addresses. That effort – soon followed by others – appeared to turn up MORE THAN 300 EXAMPLES where the data did not match reality. David Fahrenthold has more: “In one case … a $25,000 donation seemed to be mistakenly attributed to NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, one of the subjects of the movie ‘Hidden Figures.’ In another … an address came from a nonexistent person listed as living in a vacant lot in New Jersey.” An inaugural committee spokesman acknowledged both of those listings were in error, and said the committee plans to update its report.
3. Rex Tillerson invited African Union chief Moussa Faki to Washington to meet, but then he backed out at the last minute – infuriating African diplomats in a snub that could sour U.S. ties with Africa. Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer reports: [Tillerson] invited Faki to Washington the week of April 17, after Faki ended meetings at the United Nations in New York. [Sources] … say Faki scheduled his trip to Washington on April 19 and 20 while waiting for the details to be sorted out. But then Tillerson’s office went radio silent for several days, and left the head of the 55-nation bloc in the lurch and fuming ... Tillerson’s team eventually got back to Faki’s entourage as he was about to depart New York and offered a meeting with lower-level State Department officials, but Faki cancelled his Washington visit entirely. … Diplomatic and protocol missteps — particularly in dealings with Africa — can have lasting consequences and potentially burn bridges that took decades to build, experts warn. Faki chairs the only continent-wide organization that speaks for Africa as a whole, and has been supportive of U.S. efforts to take a tougher line against terrorism. The incident also showcases how the understaffed State Department can botch even basic tasks like scheduling courtesy visits, mistakes that send political shock waves through the countries they spurn.”
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