The director of the personnel office, John McEntee, has installed a young, loyal aide as he evaluates the loyalty of officials across the administration.
The White House has hired a college senior to be one of the top officials in its powerful Presidential Personnel Office, according to three administration officials familiar with the matter.
James Bacon, 23, is acting as one of the right-hand men to new PPO director John McEntee, according to the officials. Bacon, a senior at George Washington University pursuing a bachelor’s degree, comes from the Department of Transportation, where he briefly worked in the policy shop. Prior to that role, while still taking classes, he worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was a White House liaison, according to two other officials. At HUD, he distinguished himself as Secretary Ben Carson’s confidential assistant, according to two other administration officials.
Bacon worked for McEntee on the Trump campaign’s earliest days and also did some work on the advance team. He later did operations on the Trump transition. Bacon would have graduated on time if he had not taken time off from school to work on the campaign, an official said.
Bacon will be PPO’s director of operations overseeing paperwork and will assist on vetting. The role was previously filled by Katja Bullock, who is in her late 70s and was a veteran of the office in both Bush administrations, as well as the Reagan administration.
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McEntee, 29, held a meeting in a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last Thursday with White House liaisons of Cabinet departments where he asked officials to find Trump appointees who may be anti-Trump, according to an administration official familiar with the meeting. McEntee also told them that PPO was going to take a look at all appointees at some point and re-vet them to see if they’ve been disloyal in any way.
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I used to joke to my students that interns run Washington. It's not a joke anymore. https://t.co/mpf1HV6JlD
— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) February 26, 2020
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
—Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” https://t.co/fKMIhUu5Hx— Windsor Mann (@WindsorMann) February 26, 2020
I hire only the best people.
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