Last one out of the White House, turn out the lights
Earlier today Donald Trump announced that his Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will be replaced with another Acting Secretary of Defense, meaning the Trump regime will have gone six months and counting without a Secretary of Defense. This comes days after Trump announced that his Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is resigning, with no replacement on the horizon. But this is just the start of the bleeding.
Donald Trump has gone two months without a Homeland Security Director. He’s gone a month and a half without an ICE Director. He’s gone three months without a FEMA Director. He’s gone five months without a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Trump has no White House Communications Director, and he’s gone five months without a permanent White House Chief of Staff.
It’s not just that people are running away screaming from Donald Trump’s administration. It’s that he isn’t even bothering to fill most of the positions. Half the people he’s placed in “Acting” positions would never survive the scrutiny of the Senate confirmation process, as we’ve just seen with Shanahan.
On some morbid level, this all makes sense. Donald Trump is an illegitimate president to begin with, who wouldn’t be in power if not for his campaign’s extensive collusion with the Russians. So of course he prefers to run an illegitimate government, full of people who have bypassed the constitutionally required confirmation process. But it runs even deeper than that. Trump can’t even manage to fill the positions that don’t require Senate confirmation. Competent, non-corrupt, non-scandalous people simply don’t want to work for his evil clown show.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report