A new president needs to staff his administration with people who will be loyal to him. Donald Trump’s problem is that he does not have enough loyalists to staff the White House, much less the entire executive branch.
Previous presidents have come to Washington after enough time in politics to develop concentric circles of loyalists who can take jobs at all levels of government. Just look at the people who stood ready to help the Bush family or the Clintons over the years.
Trump, who never held public office before winning the presidency, didn’t have that. In addition, he campaigned with an abrasive style that alienated a significant portion of the Republican Party’s political talent. Beyond that, Trump’s way of running his business, even though it made him a billionaire, was small in scale — in his Trump Tower office, he relied heavily on a tight circle of people who were either related to him or had been with him for a very long time.
Now, Trump’s style has led to an acute staffing problem across the administration and also to high-profile infighting in the White House. The former means that Trump cannot assert full control over a massive federal bureaucracy that is already inclined to resist him. The latter has led to an almost comical situation in which the president has piled portfolio upon portfolio on trusted son-in-law Jared Kushner — now commonly referred to as one of the most powerful men in Washington — who had no preparation for the responsibility.
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The problem: Trump doesn't have enough loyalists to staff the White House, much less the entire executive branch. https://t.co/rhP80ofapW
— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 13, 2017
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