“And Trump wonders why he can’t get anything done,” said one former Trump transition official, who alleges that Trump’s senior staff have walled off campaign loyalists from top jobs. “It was hard in January 2018 to imagine Trump senior personnel decision-making to get any worse. But it has.”
Earlier this month Trump picked Bill Barr, a former Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush as his replacement for Jeff Sessions. Two of his recent hires for the White House counsel’s office, Mike Purpura and Pat Philpin, served under President George W. Bush. They will report to the new White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who served in the elder Bush’s Justice Department.
Meanwhile, the newly confirmed deputy secretary of the Treasury Department, Justin Muzinich, worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign and helped to draft his tax plan. Trump’s pick to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Heath Tarbert, served as an associate counsel to George W. Bush — a fact unmentioned in a recent White House announcement of his nomination. Jim Jeffrey, a former senior aide in George W. Bush’s White House, became the president’s U.S. special representative to Syria in August.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member