President Donald Trump Is Toxic to His Own Administration

Harassment

trump

Toxic is probably the best word to explain the day-to-day life working with President Donald Trump in the White House.

He bickers. He raves. He torments. He fires, or at least, has someone else fire people on his behalf. President Trump once shouted so viciously at Chief of Staff John Kelly that Kelly told staff “he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country.”

The president also shouted at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, so cruelly that Sessions portrayed it as “the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.”

To some in his administration, this is an obvious impression of Trump. “This administration is toxic and dysfunctional,” says Paul Musgrave, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The weak link is Trump himself.” The ramifications may be difficult to recognize on a day-to-day level, but experts say the president’s occasional discomfiture to his staff annihilates morale and White House enthusiasm.

On top of that, public conflicts between the president and his cabinet can truly undermine the administration’s foreign policy intentions. For example, Rex Tillerson said that he was settling directly with North Korean bureaucrats — but then Trump tweeted that he should knock it off. The president told Tillerson that he is wasting his time attempting to work it out with “Little Rocket Man.” He Also told Tillerson to save his energy, they will do what is required. The fact that Trump’s harsh management approach has been publicly announced makes all of this worse.

Most Recent Officials Who Have left the President’s Administration and Why

More than a year into Trump’s administration, over 12 significant members of the White House have left their posts.

The most recent departure from the White House Trumpis Tillerson, the secretary of state. He officially started Feb. 1, 2017, and left March 13, 2018. Although Tillerson stayed during the transition, according to the White House, he was the second secretary of state to leave Trump’s council after the president notified him he was being replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Tillerson and the president have had disruptive points in their relationship. One caused Tillerson to call the president a “moron.” “We got along quite well but we disagreed on things,” the president indicated to reporters, moments after tweeting his decision to replace Tillerson with Pompeo, noting how he and Tillerson “felt a bit differently” on the Iran nuclear deal.

Domestic violence accusations led to White House staff secretary, Rob Portes’s resignation, followed by speechwriter David Sorensen’s a few days later. This has thrown the West Wing into complete disorder and confusion and put Chief of Staff John Kelly’s job at risk. But the White House’s staffing disaster does not stop there.

The administration is in dire need of constructing a bench for its future, due to 37 high-level Trump assistants who have resigned or been fired. Moreover, Deputy Directors of the National Economic Council, the National Security Council, and the Domestic Policy Council, as well as multiple deputy chiefs of staff, are some of the many jobs that still remain open today. Some sources believe there will be many more resignations.

Twice as many than President Ronald Reagan’s turnover percentage in his first year, and more than three times as high as President Barack Obama’s in the same time period. Trump’s 34 percent turnover rate makes him the present record-holder. Only five of 12 positions, considered most predominant to the president, are still filled by the same person as when Trump took office. This data shows that President Trump is possibly the worse president America has had, according to administration disruption alone.

Written by Davell Jackson
Edited by Jeanette Smith

Sources:

Vox: Why there’s so much chaos in the Trump administration
Vox: “Toxic on a day-to-day level”: how Trump is mismanaging the White House
ABC NEWS: A list of officials who have left the Trump administration

Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Left Side Image Courtesy of James N. Mattis’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License

Share:

Send Us A Message