As Team Trump vetoes not-loyal-enough staff picks, hundreds of administration jobs remain unfilled

Rss@dailykos.com (hunter) · Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 5:36 pm

In the seemingly unending list of tasks and duties Donald Trump and his team are systemically screwing up, among the biggest screw-ups is the team's inability to properly staff his own government. Donald Trump has more than 500 Senate-confirmed offices sitting empty because he hasn't nominated anyone for those positions—and he hasn't nominated anyone for those positions because the chief requirement for each and every one of them is that the nominee must never have criticized Trump or worked against him in any capacity, and there just ain't 500 qualified people in the country who meet that test.

The result is a hiring effort stuck up to its axles in Donald Trump's ego, and it's wreaking havoc as his senior cabinet officials try to staff their departments only to have their choices shot down by the White House.

When an informal adviser to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently recommended a candidate for a high-level Senate-confirmed position at the agency, the adviser was told that the candidate had little chance of getting the job because the person had previously worked for an organization that was seen as being at odds with Trump’s policy positions, one person familiar with the issue said.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has clashed with White House officials over top officials in his department, sources say. The White House saw some of Mnuchin’s picks as too liberal or not supportive enough of Trump, sources say. Trump has yet to name Mnuchin’s No. 2, nor has he tapped any undersecretaries or assistant secretaries at the department.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has struggled with the White House to appoint his own aides, with significant pushback from the White House over deputy positions and ambassadorships. Several high-level people were delayed or scuttled because they didn't agree with Trump during the campaign or because the White House preferred someone else [...]

And on and on. If it seems like this administration continues to be staggeringly incompetent, there's a fine reason for that: they still don't have anyone who actually knows what they're doing on the team. People like Tillerson and DeVos were picked for their ideologies, but know nothing about the departments they're supposed to be leading. Underlings who might know more are being nixed because anyone who might know what the hell they're doing probably wasn't a Trump supporter during the campaign, and therefore Trump's team doesn't want to risk letting them in the building.

Source
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/D68wzb_0gTU/-As-Team-Trump-vetoes-not-loyal-enough-staff-picks-hundreds-of-administration-jobs-remain-unfilled