What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[jimmy olsen]

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far. What a clusterfuck, W. Bush couldn't officially start his transition until December and he didn't have these problems.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-18/the-empty-trump-administration

The Empty Trump Administration

Jan 18, 2017 11:49 AM EST

Jonathan Bernstein

We're two days away from having a new president. But we're apparently a lot longer than that from having a Trump administration with even a minimally functional ability to govern.

Politico's Michael Crowley has a nice piece explaining the missing National Security Council staffers, and the dangers that could cause if there's an early crisis. Hundreds of briefing papers have been created by Obama's NSC and sent to Team Trump, but the New York Times reports that no one knows if they've been reviewed.

Yet the NSC is ahead of the curve for this administration. Look at the big four departments. There's no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two departments (along with, bizarrely, Commerce) where Trump has selected a deputy secretary. But no solicitor general, no one at civil rights, no one in the civil division, no one for the national security division.

And the same is true in department after department. Not to mention agencies without anyone at all nominated by the president-elect.

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.

The Atlantic's Russell Berman had a good story two weeks ago about how far behind Trump was. Since then? If anything, it's getting worse -- he's added only two of those 28 since Jan. 5. As Berman reported, the Partnership for Public Service suggested a president should have "100 Senate-confirmed appointees in place on or around Inauguration Day." At this pace, he won't have 100 nominees by the end of February, let alone having them confirmed and hard at work.

The likely consequences?

First of all, the government actually does things, and without all the jobs filled it's not apt to do them very well. Even if there's no catastrophic failure, lack of leadership will, as should be no surprise, yield inertia and low morale, leading to steadily worse performance.1 

When it comes to policy, Trump will be only a vague presence in the executive branch during the months when presidents normally have the best chance to get things done. It's not news to anyone that bureaucrats are skilled in resisting the preferences of presidents. But an entrenched bureaucracy against a secretary (and in most cases, a secretary with little government experience or little policy expertise or both) and a bunch of empty desks? That's no contest. Congress and interest groups may still have plenty of clout inside the departments and agencies, but Trump, at least until he has some people there, will have little.

It's possible Trump, or the people around him, intend to just bypass the executive branch and attempt to run the nation, including its foreign policy, out of the White House. It's possible, to some extent, but that rarely ends well.

It's also possible Trump just wants to outsource policy beneath his main agenda to interest groups, the way he's apparently accepted a list of potential Supreme Court nominees from the Heritage Foundation, or to Congress. That's a dangerous step for a president, because even if he has no personal objections to the policy outcomes, neither interest groups nor Congress is apt to look after the best interests of the president.

If I had to guess, however, I'd say that the failure to get his administration up and running on time isn't a deliberate choice by Trump; he just has no idea what he's doing, and hasn't surrounded himself with people well-equipped to translate his impulses and his campaign commitments into a full-fledged government. This isn't exactly a surprise. Recall that the Trump Organization has never had a large bureaucracy and that his campaign didn't staff up the way campaigns normally do, so he doesn't really have any relevant management experience. And, of course, he's never demonstrated any significant knowledge in how the government actually works. The results are likely to be damaging to his presidency, and to the nation.

1. I have nothing but respect for federal civil servants, but it's worth mentioning that the combination of loose supervision, the low morale that comes (in several agencies) from having a president and a political appointee who don't believe in the mission of the agency, and the example of the ethics practices of the incoming president himself are just about the best formula for corruption I can imagine.

[Zanza]

And he himself will probably recluse himself to Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower half of the time.

[Jacob]

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far. What a clusterfuck, W. Bush couldn't officially start his transition until December and he didn't have these problems.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-18/the-empty-trump-administration

... let's hope there are no crises for Trump to respond to until he is ready.

[Razgovory]

Fuck it.  Let it all burn. Sometimes the only way you learn is putting your hand on the stove.

[Syt]

Fuck it.  Let it all burn. Sometimes the only way you learn is putting your hand on the stove.

He and his core supporters will find others to blame.

[Syt]

Apparently DeVos was listed as "Vice President" in her mother's company in tax records for over 15 years. She says she never held the position and it must be "a clerical error."


And:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/steven-mnuchin-treasury-secretary-nominee-assets-confirmation.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

WASHINGTON — Steven T. Mnuchin, President-elect Donald J. Trump's pick to be Treasury secretary, failed to disclose nearly $100 million of his assets on Senate Finance Committee disclosure documents and forgot to mention his role as a director of an investment fund located in a tax haven.

[MadImmortalMan]

Being listed as an officer on a company is trivial if it's just a simple entity. You do have to attend at least one "official" meeting a year though. Could be having lunch at IHOP with mom, but still.

[CountDeMoney]

I warned you.
I prepared you.
I instructed you.
I told you what to expect.
All the time and seasons together today.
Do yourself some service. The day of the Lord so cometh.

[Syt]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Getting ready to leave for Washington, D.C. The journey begins and I will be working and fighting very hard to make it a great journey for the American people. I have no doubt that we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[MadImmortalMan]

I warned you.
I prepared you.
I instructed you.
I told you what to expect.
All the time and seasons together today.
Do yourself some service. The day of the Lord so cometh.

Gonna have that song in my head all day now.

[Syt]

[alfred russel]

So if Trump manages to lose just one major american city and get stuck in two quagmire wars, he will be exceeding expectations. 

[Grey Fox]

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far. What a clusterfuck, W. Bush couldn't officially start his transition until December and he didn't have these problems.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-18/the-empty-trump-administration

You don't need nominees to position you are going to be closing.

[Jacob]

Incoming President Donald Trump's administration is already working on preparing his budget. And it looks like it will be far more extreme than anything the Republican Party has proposed so far.

The blueprint Trump's team is working with as it crafts the plan would cut federal government spending by $10.5 trillion over a decade, according to The Hill's sources.
By contrast, the budget proposal put forward by House Republicans last year promised to cut spending by $5.5 trillion over 10 years. Even that number at the time was significant: the budget document itself noted that it was "higher than any previous House Budget Committee proposal." The Republican Study Committee put forward a different proposal that would cut $8.6 trillion over a decade, although it failed a 2015 vote 132 to 294 despite Republican control.

To get such deep cuts, the Trump budget contemplates completely eliminating a number of programs, particularly at the Departments of Energy, Justice, State, Commerce, and Transportation.
On the chopping block, according to The Hill, would be the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the Department of Justice's Legal Services Corporation and Violence Against Women Grants; funding for the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity, and Office of Fossil Energy, among others.

It's likely many other programs will be cut as well, even if they aren't eliminated entirely. Those details are still to come, as Trump's budget won't be finalized for some time. A document outlining its main priorities is expected within 45 days of his taking office, while the full budget will likely be released around mid-April.

But if the House Republican budget is any guide, programs that serve the most needy are likely to be in danger. That proposal derived 62 percent of its cuts from low-income programs, such as food stamps and Pell grants, even though those programs account for just 28 percent of non-defense spending.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-budget-cuts-842cfa3037#.e9byvqwi4

[garbon]

I wonder if NEA is out as Trump is aggrieved that he couldn't fill the position. IIRC, Stallone turned him down.