The high rate of turnover at President Donald Trump’s White House continues despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis, with one researcher noting that a key post dealing with pandemics has been help by six separate officials in under three years, Politico reports.
The Brookings Institute found that the turnover rate among top Trump officials, not including Cabinet secretaries, is 86% as of May 15. Brookings’ nonresident senior fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas found that about a dozen pandemic-related positions in the White House have been held by more than one person since Trump’s inauguration, and in some cases by four people or more. Trump has had six deputy national security advisers, four national security advisers and four national security council chiefs of staff in about three years.
“Conflicting and confusing presidential messages, test scarcity, uncertainty about ventilator availability and a task force that changed composition at least three times reflect a leadership vacuum that, in part, stems from staff turnover,” Tenpas notes.
“You have people learning as they go and a loss of institutional memory and history,” one former senior administration official, who was not identified, told Politico. “What it means is that staff, processes and particular councils and legislative affairs efforts are likely to be less important and less influential. The president does it himself in an ad hoc manner.”
They added, “The staff turnover just exacerbates that phenomenon.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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