How Trump Let the Swamp Drain Him

Source: Daily Beast | April 27, 2017 | Lachlan Markay

President Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp.’ But after 100 days, it seems he just filled the same murky waters with a new set of creatures.

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At the 100-day mark of his presidency, no Trump campaign promise remains more divorced from present reality than his pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington. It’s a problem, in part, of his own making since the president’s brand of Republican politics all but requires him to violate his own standards for the staffing of his administration.

The resulting flood of lobbyists and business executives into the administration has led to some glaring discrepancies between Trump’s campaign rhetoric and early staffing decisions that appear to run afoul of the spirit if not the letter of campaign promises and ethics rules implemented by a January executive order.

Trump has stacked his administration with special interests not because he needs their money, but because he needs them, physically. A short-staffed administration desperate to fill high-level posts needs expertise in top positions, and Trump has fewer avenues for talent recruitment than other Republicans might.

Trump routintely railed on Wall Street during the campaign, then brought on veterans of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs to lead the Treasury Department and the White House National Economic Council. He derided the influence of lobbyists on the policymaking process, then secretly waived ethics rules so they could take high-level posts in his administration.

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Trump’s explicit hostility to free trade puts him at odds with many conservative think tanks and academics, so drawing top Commerce staff from those groups, still ingrained with Reagan-era ideas about the free flow of goods, was never an option. So he turned to the private sector for top talent, and industry was happy to imbue the White House with its own policy preferences.

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Trump seems to have realized early on that, absent the types of staffing farm teams that might be available to a more conventional Republican, he would be forced to draw on the private sector—and the Washington influence industry in particular.

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Apparently recognizing that reality, Trump administration ethics rules eliminated an Obama-era provision that barred officials from serving in federal agencies that they had lobbied in the last two years. The result has been an explosion of high-level officials who share some of Trump’s nationalist policy preferences but have deep ties to an industry that might have prevented them from serving in the same roles for Trump’s predecessor.

For example, in his role at Commerce, Kaplan will, if confirmed by the Senate, be in charge of a policy agenda that prioritizes the precise policies that he pressed as a lobbyist in discussions with legislators and administrators, including staff at the department where he now works.

That work appears to directly contradict the language of the ethics pledge he will be required to sign upon taking office. Imposed by an executive order in January, it bars all appointees from participating in “particular matters of general applicability” that overlap with their previous lobbying work. The White House has said that it will consider waiving portions of the pledge if necessary.

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Instead, the administration has been secretly issuing waivers to numerous officials who would otherwise be barred from participating in major policymaking decisions due to their previous lobbying work, according to a recent New York Times report.

At the same time, former Trump confidantes are spinning the revolving door in the other direction, seeking to influence policy from the outside on behalf of paying corporate clients. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is even marketing his lobbying services as protection against “tweet risk”—or the prospect that the president might say something bad about one’s company on his frequently caustic Twitter account.

The push by Lewandowski and others in Trump’s orbit to monetize their connections, and the lack of public information on who in the administration has been exempted from Trump’s ethics rules, creates natural demand for information on the people and organizations seeking to influence White House policy.

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