None of the Best People
“You need people that are truly, truly capable. We need to get the best and the finest, and if we don’t we’ll be in trouble for a long period of time.”
Donald Trump on the criteria for his prospective senior administrators — September 2016
I just love making lists.
Here’s one — David Shulkin, H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, John McEntee, Gary Cohn, Hope Hicks, Rob Porter, Omarosa Manigault, Dina Powell, Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke, Michael Flynn and Sally Yates.
That’s a list of people who once worked in and around the White House, but who’ve either been fired or have resigned.
Candidate Trump’s pledge to hire all the “best people” to serve as his senior administrators was a flat-out fairy tale.
In fact, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates left the Trump administration just 10 days after Trump took office. His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired 25 days into it.
It’s been one continuous revolving door.
Add to that the ever-increasing scrutiny Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, and HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, have been under for their excessive uses of taxpayer money, and it’s difficult trying to find any of those “best people” Trump promised us he’d hire before he took office.
Trump has made some mighty curious selections to fill his cabinet.
Rick Perry once famously announced he’d get rid of the Department of Energy if he was elected president.
Rick Perry now heads the Department of Energy.
Scott Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general.
Scott Pruitt now heads the EPA.
Betsy DeVos is Trump’s Secretary of Education.
She’d championed the causes of school vouchers and charter schools, but not of public schools – before she was chosen to function in their best interests.
Now comes Dr. Ronny Jackson.
He was Trump’s choice to head the Veterans Administration.
He gained instant stardom back in January when he gave Trump’s glowing health report to a national TV audience.
Trump may have been watching in the Oval Office when he heard Dr. Jackson say, “I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old.”
Trump may not have been pleased that Jackson hadn’t said he’d live forever, but he was still impressed with the cut of his jib.
He was so impressed that he nominated him to head the second largest department in the U.S. government.
Heck! He said his blood pressure is good, so why not give him a job overseeing 350,000 employees?
He said the president should “remain fit for the remainder of this term, and even for the remainder of another term if he’s elected,” so why not hand him the responsibility to serve 9 million veterans a year, and a total of 20 million military veterans?
That didn’t make sense, did it?
Last week, there were serious red flags raised about Dr. Jackson’s behavior during his time as the White House physician.
Jackson decided the red flags weren’t worth the bother, and he backed away from the job.
It’s another indication that Trump hasn’t exactly been hiring the “best people.” And he hasn’t even bothered to vet many of them.
Perhaps the last time Trump performed any vetting was back in 2011 when he supposedly sent some investigators to Hawaii.
“I have people that have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” Trump said, regarding the hunt for Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
Nobody believed there were any investigators.
It had all been for show.
After Obama released his birth certificate, Trump decided to try to disqualify him by claiming he’d fudged his college credits.
If he was half as diligent about the qualifications of his own hires today as he was about Obama’s qualifications, they wouldn’t be playing musical chairs when it’s time for cabinet meetings.
That won’t happen.
Trump is who he is, which is NOT who he says he is – period.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.