Good job Donald Trump, that’ll fix everything
Over the past few days we’ve seen a startling and scary reminder of just how thinly and poorly staffed the Donald Trump administration is. The Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security resorted to asking the public for help on Twitter when he couldn’t get a coronavirus map to load. Then Trump’s senior adviser Larry Kudlow went on TV and insisted that the coronavirus has been contained in the United States, even as the CDC was confirming the opposite.
So many of Trump’s top people have resigned amid scandal, or resigned in protest of him, or been fired and marched out of the White House, or been criminally indicted, we’ve lost track. Even more alarmingly, Trump rarely bothers to fill any of the vacated roles, which is how you end up with something like an “Acting Deputy Secretary” in charge of things. But don’t worry, because Trump has a fix for it all.
Donald Trump just hired a kid who’s still in college to be one of the top officials in the Presidential Personnel Office, according to a surreal report that’s from Politico, but sounds like it should be from the Onion. We’re all for giving bright young up and comers a chance to shine. But you don’t put some college kid in charge of a key White House office, considering his lack of experience. If you are going to hire an up and comer, you put them in an office that includes seasoned veterans, not a mostly depleted office.
The kicker of course is that even though there are plenty of bright young people who deserve a shot at being government officials, Donald Trump has surely picked the least qualified kid he can find. He’s never made a non-ridiculous hire to date, so why would he start now?
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report