Last one out of Donald Trump’s White House, turn out the lights
The United States hasn’t had a Secretary of Defense since last year. As of today it no longer has a Secretary of the Air Force, FEMA Director, or White House Communications Director. And that’s only the half of it. Donald Trump’s regime is falling to pieces, and he either can’t or won’t plug the holes. So now what?
In addition to the other vacancies, there is currently no White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of the Interior, or U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to keep some of these positions staffed. For instance, depending on how you want to count it, Trump just lost his fifth or sixth White House Communications Director with today’s resignation of Bill Shine. This is the same job that Anthony Scaramucci once held for eleven days. We’re not even sure whether to count Jason Miller, who quit before he could even take the job.
Then we have the revolving cast of characters surrounding the UN Ambassador job, with each new candidate being even less qualified than the last. And we all know that Mick Mulvaney is only the acting White House Chief of Staff because literally no one wanted the job; even Chris Christie famously turned it down. It’s clear that Trump simply can’t fill many of these positions, because he’s become far too radioactive for anyone legitimate to want to stand anywhere near him.
But there are other positions that Donald Trump is seemingly leaving vacant on purpose. The longer he goes with an “Acting” Secretary of Defense instead of a real one, the harder it is for Congress to do any oversight over Trump’s corrupt military antics. We just watched Trump go four months with an Acting Attorney General, in the failed hope it would allow him to shut down the investigations into his criminal scandals.
From the start, Donald Trump’s personnel decisions have consisted of putting a whole lot of corrupt and incompetent people in place to do his bidding, along with trying to install just a handful of legitimate people for the sake of appearances. The few legitimate folks are all now long gone. Many of the ringers have flamed out as well.
Donald Trump wasn’t legitimately elected President of the United States, and at this point he’s merely holding the presidency hostage as a way of trying to fend off his inevitable indictment and arrest. No legitimate person would want to work for Trump under these terms, nor would he want any legitimate person working for him. What stands out here is that, as Trump circles the drain, he seems to be even less worried about appearances than ever.
