Yet another Donald Trump official forced out in scandal
In addition to being illegitimate and criminal in nature, Donald Trump’s time in the White House has also been marked by a startling amount of personnel turnover, most of it involving controversy or scandal. Now yet another Trump official has been shoved out the back door in response to an ugly scandal, in a panic move aimed at trying to prevent even more such job losses.
Trump’s VA Secretary David Shulkin has come under widespread calls to resign after it was revealed that he wasted taxpayer money during an extravagant trip to Europe and then had his staff try to cover it up. Shulkin keeps refusing to resign, but the scandal isn’t going away. Now his Chief of Staff Vivieca Wright Simpson is taking the fall by quietly “retiring” according to Reuters (link) – which in these kinds of situations is code for resigning in scandal.
It’s still far from clear whether Shulkin himself will be able to survive this scandal. Numerous Trump cabinet members have been caught making extravagant trips and travel arrangements on the taxpayer dime. Thus far Trump has only forced HHS Secretary Tom Price to resign over it, which for a time seemed to quell the scandal, saving Trump from having to get rid of any other cabinet members who were guilty of similar behavior. But this is a scandal that just won’t die.
Tom Price and now Vivieca Wright Simpson are joined by the earlier scandalous Trump White House resignations of Michael Flynn, Sebastian Gorka, Reince Priebus, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, KT McFarland, Steve Bannon, and too many others to list. Donald Trump promised he’d hire the best people. Instead he’s hired the very worst people he could find, and he’s spent the past year dumping them in an effort at keeping the focus off his own numerous criminal scandals.
