President struggles to fill jobs when total loyalty is a must
MELBOURNE, Fla. — During President Donald Trump’s transition to power, his team reached out to Elliott Abrams for help building a new administration. Mr. Abrams, a seasoned Republican foreign policy official, sent lists of possible candidates for national security jobs.
One by one, the answer from the Trump team came back no. The reason was consistent: This one had said disparaging things about Mr. Trump during the campaign; that one had signed a letter opposing him. Finally, the White House asked Mr. Abrams himself to meet with the president about becoming deputy secretary of state, only to have the same thing happen — vetoed because of past criticism.
Mr. Abrams’ experience has become a case study in the challenges Mr. Trump still faces in filling top positions a month into his presidency. Mr. Trump remains fixated on the campaign as he applies a loyalty test to some prospective officials.
As Mr. Trump brings candidates for national security adviser to meet with him in Florida this weekend, he presides over a government where the upper echelons remain sparsely populated. Six of the 15 statutory Cabinet secretaries are still awaiting Senate confirmation as Democrats nearly uniformly oppose almost all of the president’s choices. Even some of the Cabinet secretaries in place may feel they are home alone.
It is not just Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who has no deputy secretary, much less Mr. Trump-appointed undersecretaries or assistant secretaries. Neither do the heads of the Treasury Department, the Education Department or any of the other Cabinet departments. Only three of 15 nominees have been named for deputy secretary positions. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has a deputy only because he kept the one left over from the Obama administration.
That does not even begin to cover the rest of the more than 4,000 appointments that a president typically makes. In some cases, the Trump administration is even going in reverse. A senior political appointee at the housing department, who had started the job, was fired this past week when someone discovered his previous statements critical of Mr. Trump.
The president’s top Latin America official at the National Security Council was likewise fired after just weeks on the job for complaining about internal dysfunction at an off-the-record discussion at a Washington research organization, according to officials, who confirmed a Politico report. The State Department has laid off six top career officials in recent days, apparently out of questions about their loyalty to Mr. Trump.
“Many tough things were said about him and by him” before last year’s election, Mr. Abrams, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of state and President George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said in an interview. “I would have hoped he would have turned toward just hiring the most effective people to help him govern rather than looking back to what we said in that race.”
With no cadre ready to go from past political service, Mr. Trump has been starting from scratch. His team has been slow to vet candidates, and in some cases his choices have had troubles with their business backgrounds or other matters. And Democrats have mounted a wall of resistance to his nominations.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but Mr. Trump has disputed reports of troubles. “The White House is running so smoothly, so smoothly,” he told a rally of supporters in Melbourne, Fla., on Saturday.