Executive Departments Part 2

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wouldn't mind seeing Shulkin go, but the people floated as potential replacements are appalling: "‘He knows he is done’: Veterans Affairs chief lies low amid rumors he’ll be ousted"

Spoiler

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has lived in presidential purgatory for weeks.

The president has told a number of advisers that he wants to oust Shulkin, once a favorite in his Cabinet. But the White House has sent mixed messages publicly, and it remains unclear to what extent the secretary still has President Trump’s full trust. As recently as Monday, one White House aide declined to discuss Shulkin’s future while another told Fox News that the president had confidence in him “at this point in time.”

The uncertainty has left the leader of the federal government’s second-largest agency, its employees, and even senior White House officials wondering if Shulkin still officially speaks for VA. It has raised questions, too, about what’s being done to restore order at the agency after weeks of turmoil have left little doubt that Shulkin, the lone Obama administration holdover in Trump’s Cabinet, is next to go in what’s become a pronounced leadership shake-up.

What’s befallen Shulkin is a favorite tactic of Trump’s, who followed a similar approach with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and, to a lesser degree, national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The president emasculates those who fall from favor, humiliating them through media leaks and in disparaging comments to friends. The mixed signals often leave even senior White House officials guessing who will be fired and when. 

“Anybody who tells you they know what he is thinking is out of their mind,” said Louise Sunshine, a former longtime Trump Organization executive. “He does not want anyone else to know what he is thinking ever. It is his way of keeping everyone on guard.”

For his part, Trump doesn’t mind it. When one adviser recently told Trump he should curb the firings and departures, he said they are “24-hour stories” and people quickly forget who held the jobs.

While the president is displeased with Shulkin following a travel scandal and reports of a mutiny inside the agency, firing him has proven complicated for a variety of reasons.

For starters, it appears the White House hasn’t coalesced around a replacement. The president and his advisers are said to be weighing whether to remove the secretary and appoint an interim administrator or wait until they identify a permanent successor, according to administration officials. Either strategy would slow progress on Trump’s campaign pledge to reform the agency.

Moreover, the agency, with 360,000 employees, has proven one of the government’s most unforgiving bureaucracies to run. Its business model seems to impede innovation. Its pace of change is painstakingly slow. Its decentralized medical system is embroiled in crisis as the health-care needs grow among veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Trump’s mercurial management style may be the greatest hurdle to finding new leadership.

“I think he wakes up every day wondering if this is the day he’s going to get fired,” said one Shulkin ally, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “He knows he is done,” although the uncertainty “is wearing on him, there is no doubt about that.”

Despite rumors of his ouster, Shulkin, who declined to comment, has kept a busy schedule, appearing on Capitol Hill, visiting VA hospitals and racing to complete a multibillion dollar project to modernize the agency’s antiquated medical records system.

Those close to the secretary say he is unlikely to quit but wants to get the medical records contract signed before he is forced to leave, a deal he sees as key to his legacy.

His predicament is no doubt familiar to others once in the president’s inner circle.

During the last few weeks of Reince Priebus’s tenure as White House chief of staff, for example, he was so widely seen as weakened that some aides said they began skipping the meetings he called. Trump, meanwhile, told him he was doing a good job, even as other aides bet on how much longer he could survive. Trump eventually announced his replacement on Twitter minutes after Priebus walked off Air Force One onto a rainy tarmac.

In the case of Tillerson, foreign diplomats and prime ministers complained to U.S. lawmakers that they did not believe the secretary of state was speaking for the administration in the final six months of his tenure because Trump had so undercut him.

McMaster used to joke to other officials in the West Wing that any day could be his last and aides said his tenuous status kept him from doing his job.

Trump’s aides frequently ask him for the status of certain Cabinet officials so they will not say anything inaccurate publicly. Not checking frequently can leave an aide “looking dumb” with yesterday’s information, according to one former senior White House official. For instance, Trump told aides for several weeks that he was planning to oust McMaster. After a story said that, he told aides to deny it — and then moved to replace him less than a week later.

Trump will see a segment on TV and begin musing for someone in a job, creating uncertainty. For example, he saw Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta on “Fox & Friends” one morning and asked an aide if he could be the next attorney general. The president has, for months, attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has so far survived the public belittling.

Whether Trump was ever truly considering Acosta as attorney general is unclear; he will sometimes ask about five or 10 names a day for different jobs. 

Shulkin, say people close to him, is under no illusions that he still has the president’s confidence. He has long feared that Trump will mete out the same fate on Twitter as some of his former colleagues have. 

To that end, the secretary is laying low. He is limiting his travel to destinations close to Washington, canceling plans to speak next week at an annual ski competition for paralyzed veterans in Aspen, Colo. Shulkin is concerned, allies say, about the optics following an inspector general report that criticized a trip he led to Europe last summer.  

Shulkin has told those he trusts that he wants to avoid what happened to former FBI director James B. Comey, who learned of his firing last May from a television report while meeting with agents in Los Angeles. Trump wanted to fire Tillerson via tweet while he was traveling in Africa to maximize the humiliation, advisers say, but Chief of Staff John F. Kelly convinced him otherwise.

The distractions have hindered efforts to reform VA, agency officials say. The electronic-records contract has not been signed. Legislation crucial to the White House to expand veterans’ access to private doctors was left out of the government spending bill Congress passed last week after Democrats blocked its inclusion in the bill.

Shulkin’s weakened standing harmed his ability to forcefully advocate the administration’s position, observers say. Others contend Shulkin doesn’t fully support the administration’s desire for more private care. Moving forward, those involved in the negotiations say no one is certain who is speaking for the administration.

At VA, career officials try to avoid asking political appointees to make or sign off on decisions, since they don’t know exactly who is in charge or who they can trust, one current VA official said.

“The uncertainty from the White House has bled over to the VA and is jeopardizing the VA’s ability to serve our veterans,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

The White House faces another hurdle. The agency has few leaders who could take over on an interim basis, and Shulkin’s deputy, Thomas G. Bowman, is unlikely to get the nod because some White House officials have questioned his loyalty to the president’s agenda.

Even in a less chaotic administration, the VA secretary oversees a decentralized bureaucracy of 360,000 employees who must be accountable to Congress and to veterans when health -are and benefits delays affect them. The oversight from lawmakers, who must agree before the agency can alter policy, can slow progress and frustrate leaders who come to the job expecting to make meaningful changes.

The turmoil and uncertainty over Shulkin’s future has left veterans’ advocacy groups, who represent one of Trump’s core constituencies, fearful that efforts to modernize VA will collapse. Many are impatient for the agency to address its many challenges, including recruiting for thousands of unfilled mental health, nursing and physician jobs.

Carl Blake, executive director of Paralyzed Veterans of America, said: “Clearly right now, the VA is caught in the middle of politics, but the challenge [of the secretary’s job] is just massive. What other federal agency has to deliver everything, from health care to education benefits to disability benefits to cemetery services?”

Said John Hoellwarth, a spokesman for AMVETS, “Imagine how daunting it must be to take this complex massive job in an administration that seems to enjoy firing people.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Aaaand another one gone: "Trump ousts Veterans Affairs chief David Shulkin in administration's latest shake-up"

Spoiler

President Trump on Wednesday ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin after turmoil in the agency’s senior ranks generated weeks of unflattering headlines, ushering in a potentially dramatic shift to veterans policy.

The president announced that he would nominate Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, his personal physician, to replace Shulkin, a physician and former hospital executive who was the sole Obama-era holdover in Trump’s Cabinet. Robert Wilke, who serves as an undersecretary at the Defense Department, will serve as acting secretary.

Shulkin’s ouster comes amid a broader shake-up that began with Trump’s firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13. The president also has decided to replace his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, with former U.N. ambassador John Bolton.

Shulkin’s firing had been expected for weeks as the president, who once considered him a favorite grew disenchanted with him after a travel scandal and months of infighting within the senior ranks at the Department of Veterans Affairs spilled into public view.

Shulkin, 58, went public with claims that Trump appointees on his staff were conspiring to have him removed. The power struggle centered on differences over a shift to offering veterans more medical care from private doctors at taxpayer expense, with conservatives at VA and in the White House pushing for more private care and Shulkin favoring a more moderate approach.

The next VA secretary is likely to favor a shift toward more private care, a goal at odds with many of the traditional veterans advocacy groups.

Shulkin, 58, did not serve in the military. But he enjoyed broad support from traditional veterans groups, which fear that more private sector care will lead to diminished resources for VA’s 1,700 medical clinics and hospitals.

VA, the second-largest federal bureaucracy, employs 360,000 people and accounts for $186 billion annually. Its sprawling health-care and benefits system, which Trump blasted on the campaign trail as a wasteful, inefficient failure, serves 9 million former troops.

An internist who came to government with 30 years’ experience leading private hospitals, Shulkin led the Veterans Health Administration for 18 months under former president Barack Obama.

He delivered multiple legislative victories for Trump during his first year at the agency, from a bill that clears a fast path to firing employees accused of misconduct to measures aimed at easing the backlog of benefit appeals. He oversaw creation of a 24-hour hotline for veteran complaints and improved transparency, posting wait times for medical appointments at each facility and other quality-control measures consistent with many private sector hospitals.

“He also deserves some credit for holding the ship together during these very turbulent first 15 months of the Trump administration, just keeping the VA moving forward,” said Philip Carter, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where he focuses on veterans issues.

Shulkin’s biggest weakness Carter said, was that he didn’t connect with the president’s allies. “That was always festering beneath the surface — he was an Obama holdover,” Carter said. “And stylistically he’s not of the same world as President Trump. He never quite clicked with the president’s inner circle.”

Though Trump and Shulkin got along well for many months, the mood inside the White House began to change as Shulkin clashed with conservative appointees over how to expand veterans access to private medical care, a program known as Choice that started in 2014 after revelations VA managers were manipulating patient wait lists.

They believed Shulkin was not moving aggressively enough to expand private care, and worked behind the scenes to sow doubt in the minds of the president and his top aides after VA’s inspector general released a critical investigation in February into a trip the secretary led to Europe last summer.

The report found “serious derelictions” before and during the trip, much of which was spent sightseeing. It found that Shulkin improperly accepted a gift of Wimbledon tennis tickets for him and his wife, who traveled with him at taxpayer expense.

Shulkin vociferously defended himself at first, insisting he did nothing wrong and accusing his detractors at VA of using the report to force him out. It led to embarrassing headlines that irritated top White House officials and the president, who began to search for a replacement.

The VA secretary oversees a health care and benefits system beset by challenges, including an alarming suicide rate of 20 veterans per day, and a shortage of mental health therapists, doctors and nurses.

 

[onekidanddone]

50 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Aaaand another one gone: "Trump ousts Veterans Affairs chief David Shulkin in administration's latest shake-up"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump on Wednesday ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin after turmoil in the agency’s senior ranks generated weeks of unflattering headlines, ushering in a potentially dramatic shift to veterans policy.

The president announced that he would nominate Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, his personal physician, to replace Shulkin, a physician and former hospital executive who was the sole Obama-era holdover in Trump’s Cabinet. Robert Wilke, who serves as an undersecretary at the Defense Department, will serve as acting secretary.

Shulkin’s ouster comes amid a broader shake-up that began with Trump’s firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 13. The president also has decided to replace his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, with former U.N. ambassador John Bolton.

Shulkin’s firing had been expected for weeks as the president, who once considered him a favorite grew disenchanted with him after a travel scandal and months of infighting within the senior ranks at the Department of Veterans Affairs spilled into public view.

Shulkin, 58, went public with claims that Trump appointees on his staff were conspiring to have him removed. The power struggle centered on differences over a shift to offering veterans more medical care from private doctors at taxpayer expense, with conservatives at VA and in the White House pushing for more private care and Shulkin favoring a more moderate approach.

The next VA secretary is likely to favor a shift toward more private care, a goal at odds with many of the traditional veterans advocacy groups.

Shulkin, 58, did not serve in the military. But he enjoyed broad support from traditional veterans groups, which fear that more private sector care will lead to diminished resources for VA’s 1,700 medical clinics and hospitals.

VA, the second-largest federal bureaucracy, employs 360,000 people and accounts for $186 billion annually. Its sprawling health-care and benefits system, which Trump blasted on the campaign trail as a wasteful, inefficient failure, serves 9 million former troops.

An internist who came to government with 30 years’ experience leading private hospitals, Shulkin led the Veterans Health Administration for 18 months under former president Barack Obama.

He delivered multiple legislative victories for Trump during his first year at the agency, from a bill that clears a fast path to firing employees accused of misconduct to measures aimed at easing the backlog of benefit appeals. He oversaw creation of a 24-hour hotline for veteran complaints and improved transparency, posting wait times for medical appointments at each facility and other quality-control measures consistent with many private sector hospitals.

“He also deserves some credit for holding the ship together during these very turbulent first 15 months of the Trump administration, just keeping the VA moving forward,” said Philip Carter, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where he focuses on veterans issues.

Shulkin’s biggest weakness Carter said, was that he didn’t connect with the president’s allies. “That was always festering beneath the surface — he was an Obama holdover,” Carter said. “And stylistically he’s not of the same world as President Trump. He never quite clicked with the president’s inner circle.”

Though Trump and Shulkin got along well for many months, the mood inside the White House began to change as Shulkin clashed with conservative appointees over how to expand veterans access to private medical care, a program known as Choice that started in 2014 after revelations VA managers were manipulating patient wait lists.

They believed Shulkin was not moving aggressively enough to expand private care, and worked behind the scenes to sow doubt in the minds of the president and his top aides after VA’s inspector general released a critical investigation in February into a trip the secretary led to Europe last summer.

The report found “serious derelictions” before and during the trip, much of which was spent sightseeing. It found that Shulkin improperly accepted a gift of Wimbledon tennis tickets for him and his wife, who traveled with him at taxpayer expense.

Shulkin vociferously defended himself at first, insisting he did nothing wrong and accusing his detractors at VA of using the report to force him out. It led to embarrassing headlines that irritated top White House officials and the president, who began to search for a replacement.

The VA secretary oversees a health care and benefits system beset by challenges, including an alarming suicide rate of 20 veterans per day, and a shortage of mental health therapists, doctors and nurses.

 

And now he is going to appoint the same doctor who gave him the "Not Insane" stamp of approval.

 

[formergothardite]

How many people have gotten fired so far? At this point it is really hard to keep up. Too bad Pency-Poo can't be fired. 

[fraurosena]

17 hours ago, formergothardite said:

How many people have gotten fired so far? At this point it is really hard to keep up. Too bad Pency-Poo can't be fired. 

Rachel Maddow has a tally board that she updates regularly. It needs a tiny font to list all the people who voluntarily and involuntarily have left the WH since the beginning of the presiduncy.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[formergothardite]

What is Sessions game here? I don't think he can be trusted at all, but so far he has stood between Trump and Mueller. And now he is refusing to bow down to the GOP and appoint another special council. Where is he going with this? Is this just an attempt to try to make sure he can survive the inevitable shipwreck that is coming?

[JMarie]

Seems like everyone wants to vacation in Europe.  Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it'll get you fired.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/va-secretary-david-shulkin-defends-controversial-europe-trip/story?id=54120840

Quote

Former Secretary of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin on Friday defended his controversial trip to Europe, saying the scathing report that revealed his acceptance of Wimbledon tickets was an attempt to "decrease his effectiveness" as secretary.

"There was nothing that was done improper," Shulkin told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. "What happened was this was a politicized issue. This was used to try to decrease my effectiveness in getting the job done for our veterans."

Shulkin's remarks come after he alleged his character was under attack by the people he once worked closely with.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/ryan-zinke-trip-security/index.html

Quote

Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke brought along a security detail for a trip to Greece and Turkey last summer, recently released records show.

Politico reported on the documents Wednesday -- the latest revelation about Zinke's travel and the travel of other Trump administration Cabinet members.

ZInke's itinerary, obtained by Politico, showed the secretary had a planned vacation for two weeks with his wife in August 2017, a non-government trip on which other records showed Zinke had an organized security detail.

EPA spent $30,000-plus on security detail for Administrator Scott Pruitt's Italy trip

The cost of the detail is unclear.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/politics/epa-pruitt-security-italy/index.html

Quote

The newly obtained documents showing Pruitt's June trip to visit the Vatican and to meet energy ministers at a summit cost taxpayers now has the publicly known costs of the trip to just over $120,000.

The breakdown:

$36,068 for a military jet from Cincinnati to New York City's JFK airport for the departure to Rome.

$53,633 for air/lodging/meals/ground transport for Pruitt and EPA non-security staff in Italy.

$30,558 -- the total travel cost for security staff for Italy trip.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Best and brightest...my foot: "Behind the chaos: Office that vets Trump appointees plagued by inexperience"

Spoiler

An obscure White House office responsible for recruiting and vetting thousands of political appointees has suffered from inexperience and a shortage of staff, hobbling the Trump administration’s efforts to place qualified people in key posts across government, documents and interviews show.

At the same time, two office leaders have spotty records themselves: a college dropout with arrests for drunken driving and bad checks and a lance corporal in the Marine Corps reserves with arrests for assault, disorderly conduct, fleeing an officer and underage drinking.

The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is little known outside political circles. But it has far-reaching influence as a gateway for the appointed officials who carry out the president’s policies and run federal agencies.

Under President Trump, the office was launched with far fewer people than in prior administrations. It has served as a refuge for young campaign workers, a stopover for senior officials on their way to other posts and a source of jobs for friends and family, a Washington Post investigation found. One senior staffer has had four relatives receive appointments through the office.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to surround himself “only with the best and most serious people,” but his administration has been buffeted by failed appointments and vacancies in key posts.

From the start, the office struggled to keep pace with its enormous responsibilities, with only about 30 employees on hand, less than a third of the staffing in prior administrations, The Post found. Six senior officials over age 35 went elsewhere in government just months after their arrival, documents and interviews show. Since the inauguration, most of the staffers in the PPO have been in their 20s, some with little professional experience apart from their work on Trump’s campaign, The Post found.

Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said. 

PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine and snacks for dozens of PPO employees and White House liaisons who work in federal agencies, White House officials confirmed. In January, they played a drinking game in the office called “Icing” to celebrate the deputy director’s 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.

The White House confirmed that PPO officials played the Icing game but said it and the happy hours are not unique to the PPO and are a way to network and let off steam.

Little is publicly known or disclosed about the office’s inner workings under Trump. The White House declined requests from The Post for details about composition of the staff.

The Post compiled the names of 40 current or former PPO officials under Trump and then examined their qualifications, drawing on résumés, the White House salary disclosures for 2017, ethics filings, police reports and other public records. Reporters interviewed presidential scholars and current and former officials in the Trump, Bush and Obama administrations.

The PPO is ultimately responsible for recruiting and vetting candidates for more than 4,000 jobs, about 1,600 requiring Senate approval.

Every White House faces personnel challenges and includes young and politically connected employees who get jobs through friends or family and senior officials who move on to other assignments. But the shortcomings of this office, and Trump’s appointment process in general, are among the most pronounced in memory, according to presidential scholars. 

“No administration has done it as poorly as the current one,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that teamed up with The Post to track appointments.

White House officials said the PPO is performing well, even though they acknowledged the office “is a much smaller PPO than at any time in recent history.” 

The officials asserted the office is working hard and starting to make progress on nominees for positions that require Senate confirmation. They blamed delays on Democrats and slow background checks. They said lower-level appointments lagged only moderately behind President Barack Obama’s at this point in the administration, even though experts said such appointments pale in importance to the unfilled jobs requiring Senate approval.

“Despite historic obstruction from Democrats in Congress, the Presidential Personnel Office is filling the administration with the best and brightest appointees who share the president’s vision for the country,” said Raj Shah, White House principal deputy press secretary. “Staff work tirelessly and have experience consistent with the practice of previous administrations.”  

The Trump administration’s number of appointments gaining Senate approval is way behind that of previous administrations since detailed record-keeping began in 1989, according to data maintained by the Partnership for Public Service. At the same point in their presidencies — March 29 of their second year — Obama had 548 approvals and George W. Bush had 615, compared with 387 for Trump.

... < interesting chart >

The Trump administration has received Senate approval for just 292 of 652 posts identified as key to the functioning of government by the Partnership for Public Service. The administration has offered no nominations for another 217 key Senate-confirmed posts, including director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the ambassador to South Korea.

A number of Trump appointees have been embroiled in controversy and resigned their posts over questions about their qualifications, backgrounds and comments. 

They include 24-year-old Taylor Weyeneth, who lost his job as deputy chief of staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) after a Post account detailed his lack of experience and inaccurate claims on résumés submitted to the government. An internal memo shows that the PPO deputy director ordered that a senior civil servant in ONDCP be moved into another job to make way for Weyeneth’s appointment. Weyeneth declined to comment for this article.

Another appointee, Carl Higbie, stepped down in January from the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps after the media drew attention to remarks he made on Internet radio that disparaged blacks, Muslims, gays and women. He later said he regretted the remarks.

James Pfiffner, a scholar of the presidency at George Mason University who has tracked appointments and presidential transitions since the mid-1970s, said prior PPOs were led and staffed by senior officials who understood the importance of personnel and had extensive experience, political connections and knowledge of the executive branch.

“They were well-connected and wanted the government to work well,” Pfiffner told The Post. “They understood how to make the government work well.”

Months of wasted work

The challenges in the Presidential Personnel Office began with decisions Trump made months before he moved into the Oval Office.

 In 2016, Trump named New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the leader of transition planning. Christie assembled a team of more than 100 researchers and lawyers, who generated names of candidates for critical posts for a potential administration. Just after the election, they delivered hundreds of pages that outlined a framework for the new administration.

The reports underscored the importance of the Presidential Personnel Office, saying it was essential to “provide the President with outstanding candidates,” according to documents reviewed by The Post. The Christie team estimated the job would require more than 100 people before and after the inauguration, documents show.

“Building a strong team to lead U.S. government agencies is not only critical to the effectiveness of the President, but also for the welfare of the nation,” the documents said.

 On Nov. 11, 2016, Trump fired Christie and his team and relaunched the transition. All the planning — including at least 100 candidates proposed for top jobs and 200 other prospective appointees — was in limbo. “The idea that you can take six months of work . . . and throw all that out, turned out to be a big mistake,” Christie said later at a news conference.

 One official who stayed with the transition and continued working on personnel matters was Sean Doocey, a 28-year-old aide who had joined the campaign in July as a director of research. Doocey had been a low-level staffer in the PPO under Bush and had worked for more than three years as a human resources and security executive at a small government contractor, according to a financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics, or OGE. A White House spokesman said Doocey declined to comment for this article. 

Doocey and the few others working on personnel issues struggled to find volunteers to screen potential nominees, transition and White House officials said.

The Obama administration drew on legions of lawyers willing to donate their time to review candidates for the most important Senate-approved nominees, according to former Obama officials and one official involved in the Trump transition. Trump did not have that luxury, partly because he was so critical of the Washington establishment, including traditional Republicans, the officials said.

There was also a much smaller pool of candidates to draw on compared with prior administrations. In 2009, the Obama personnel office had access to a database containing more than 300,000 applicants, while Trump’s office had just 87,000, according to Pfiffner, the GMU scholar.

On Jan. 4, 2017, just two weeks before inauguration, Trump named John DeStefano, a GOP political operative, to be director of Presidential Personnel. He had previously worked as political director for Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), then the speaker of the House. He also served for three years as chief executive of Data Trust, a voter aggregation and analysis firm that catered to Republicans. A White House spokesman said DeStefano declined to comment.

DeStefano’s appointment was a departure from prior administrations, which placed a premium on management and personnel experience, according to presidential scholars. In 2001 and 2002, for instance, Clay Johnson III served as director of the office under Bush. Johnson, a graduate of Yale and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, was then in his middle-50s. He had been Bush’s roommate at Yale. He had also served for a decade as president and chief executive at a mail order company, as chief operating officer of the Dallas Museum of Art and five years as the director of appointments for Bush, when he was governor of Texas.

At the start of Obama’s first term, the office was led by Donald Gips, a graduate of Yale’s School of Management who had previously worked as a chief domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore and spent a decade as a senior executive at a global telecommunications company as well as chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s International Bureau. 

‘It’s a disaster’

DeStefano had to stand up his shop almost from scratch. The Bush and Obama administrations relied on scores of staffers to hasten the screening of nominees and appointees in the first few months. But Trump’s presidential personnel team peaked after the inauguration at about 30, White House officials told The Post.

Some PPO staff got their jobs in part as thanks for working on the Trump campaign, White House officials acknowledged. And DeStefano brought at least two former Data Trust employees into the office. One is a 2016 college graduate who worked as an intern at Data Trust for four months and made $62,000 last year as a deputy associate director at the PPO, her LinkedIn page and the White House salary disclosures show. The other is a 24-year-old who worked at Data Trust for a year and earned $94,000 last year as a special assistant at the PPO, documents show.

 From the start, Trump’s appointments lagged far behind prior administrations. By June 20, 2017, the Senate had conformed only 44 appointees, compared with 170 for Obama and 130 for Bush in the same time period, according to Pfiffner.

“It is a disaster,” Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, told The Post.

DeStefano and Doocey, who became his deputy, turned to some experienced people from federal agencies for help. When they moved into other jobs, less-experienced employees took senior posts in the office, records show. 

One of the newcomers was a former Trump campaign worker named Caroline Wiles. Wiles, then 30, is the daughter of Susan Wiles, a prominent lobbyist and political operative in Florida. Caroline Wiles joined the Trump administration as a deputy assistant to the president and director of scheduling in the White House. News accounts said she was one of six White House staffers dismissed for failing FBI backgrounds checks, but the White House official would not confirm that. She was eventually moved to the PPO, where she was made a special assistant to the president, a post that typically pays $115,000.

The younger Wiles has an unusual background for a senior White House official. On a résumé she submitted to the state of Florida she said she had completed course work at Flagler College in Florida. On her LinkedIn page, she says she simply lists Flagler under education. A Flagler spokesman said she never finished her degree. “She did not continue her enrollment or graduate from here,” said spokesman Brian Thompson. 

Wiles has had a string of political jobs, including work at her mother’s lobbying firm and as a campaign aide for candidates her mother advised, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Donald Trump. She also worked for an education organization that helped provide health care to needy students.

Over the years, she has had multiple encounters with police. In 2005, she had her driver’s license suspended for driving while intoxicated, police records show. In 2007, she was arrested for driving while intoxicated and arrested for passing a “worthless check.” She was found guilty of a misdemeanor for driving under the influence. The charge related to the bad check was dropped in a plea agreement.

Wiles did not respond to requests for interviews.

Another special assistant to the president is Max Miller, 29, a Marine reservist and former Trump campaign worker. He works on the selection and placement of appointees to the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

 Miller was introduced to Trump campaign officials by his cousin, Eli Miller, then a senior finance official in the campaign and now chief of staff at the Treasury Department, a Treasury spokeswoman said.

On his LinkedIn page, Miller said he attended Cleveland State University from 2007 to 2011. A Cleveland State spokesman confirmed that Miller, who previously attended other schools, graduated in 2013.

Miller described himself on his LinkedIn page as a Marine recruiter and said he worked for the presidential campaigns of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Trump. But after The Post raised questions about his biography, Miller removed the dates of his education and the claim that he was a Marine recruiter. 

In an interview, he called them mistakes and blamed them on a relative who he said made the LinkedIn page for him.

Miller has been charged by police in his home state of Ohio with multiple offenses. In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after punching another male in the back of the head and running away from police, police records show. He pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges, and the case was later dismissed as part of a program for first offenders, court records show.

In 2009, he was charged with underage drinking, a case that also was later dismissed under a first offender’s program. The following year, he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge related to another altercation in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. That episode was related to a fight involving Miller shortly after leaving a hookah bar at about 2 a.m. one morning. During the fight, Miller punched through a glass door, cut his wrist and left a trail of blood as he wandered off, a police report said. 

In an interview with The Post, Miller acknowledged that his cousin helped him find work with the Trump campaign but said it was his “work ethic” that won him the White House job. He said the arrests several years ago were mistakes that he would not repeat.

“Growing up, everyone makes mistakes,” he said. “Who I was in the past is not who I am now.”

The most senior and experienced leader in the office is Katja Bullock, the 75-year-old special assistant to the president who worked in the office under Reagan and both Bush administrations. She joined the Trump transition in December, according to a financial disclosure, and now serves as an administrator, according to people familiar with the office operations. 

The president recently appointed her to the Federal Salary Council, an advisory board that suggests changes to the government’s pay scales. 

Since Bullock joined the Trump transition, four of her family members received political appointments to federal agencies. Her son became deputy assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development. His wife is a White House liaison at the Office of Personnel Management. 

One of their sons serves as a “confidential assistant” at the Social Security Administration, agency records show. And another son received an appointment in February as a “staff assistant” at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. foreign aid agency that works to end global poverty, agency records show. According to voter registration records, all four live in the same Kensington home. 

In a brief telephone interview, Bullock said she had no involvement in the appointments of her family members. “None,” she said, adding: “I am really not authorized to talk to the press.” Her relatives did not respond to requests for interviews.

She is not the only PPO official with family ties in the administration. Jimmy Carroll III, recently named an entry-level staff assistant in the office, is the son of James Carroll II, a former deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House who was recently appointed acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Carroll III graduated in August 2017 from Marymount University in Arlington, Va., where he was the sports editor of the school newspaper and created a group for Christian men called Men of Virtue, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Carrolls did not respond to requests for interviews.

In an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity, a White House official praised Caroline Wiles, the special assistant to the president, saying she had demonstrated her competence as a scheduler and organizer during the Trump campaign. “We do feel confident in her ability,” the official said. The same official said Miller’s experience in the Marine Corps Reserve “speaks volumes to his willingness to serve his country” and praised his work for the PPO.

The official said that nothing in the police records described by The Post would preclude them from working at the PPO. “For the positions they’re in, I’m not aware of any restrictions that the FBI or anyone else would have placed on their appointments,” the official said.

The official also said that PPO officials made sure Bullock was not involved in the decisions relating to her family members. He said each of them was qualified by prior experience, participation in the Trump campaign and their ideological alignment with the president. “We want people who are committed and passionate about supporting the president’s agenda,” the official said.

On Feb. 9, President Trump promoted DeStefano to assistant and counselor to the president, with responsibility for overseeing the offices of Presidential Personnel, Political Affairs and Public Liaison, an unusual portfolio for one person. At the same time, Doocey was made day-to-day leader of the PPO and named deputy assistant to the president for Presidential Personnel.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The ethics-challenged administration continues: "EPA Chief’s $50-a-Night Rental Raises White House Angst"

Spoiler

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt leased a Washington apartment owned by a lobbyist friend last year under terms that allowed him to pay $50 a night for a single bedroom -- but only on the nights when he actually slept there.

White House officials are growing dismayed about the questions surrounding Pruitt’s living arrangement, including his initial inability to produce any documentation about the lease or his actual payments, according to three officials. The landlord provided EPA officials with a copy of the lease and proof of the payments Pruitt made.

In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 to use the room for roughly six months, according to copies of rental checks reviewed by Bloomberg News. Those checks show varying amounts paid on sporadic dates -- not a traditional monthly "rent payment" of the same amount each month.

That was because of the unusual rent schedule -- not a single monthly amount, but a daily amount charged only for days used for a single bedroom in the two-bedroom unit just blocks from the Capitol. The building is at least partially owned by a health care lobbyist, Vicki Hart, via a limited liability corporation. Her husband J. Steven Hart, is also a lobbyist, whose firm represents clients in industries regulated by the EPA.

One person familiar with the lease compared it to an Airbnb-style arrangement, but Pruitt wasn’t a transient and instead made the apartment his home on nights he was in Washington. The lease -- also reviewed by Bloomberg -- says that he was charged $50 a night "based on days of actual occupancy."

Bloomberg reviewed six canceled checks paid by Pruitt totaling $6,100 from March 18 through Sept 1, 2017. He paid $450 on March 18, $900 on April 26, $850 on May 15, $700 on June 4, $1,500 on July 22 and $1,700 on Sept 1.

A sampling of current listings of apartments for rent near Pruitt’s temporary pad showed studio and one-bedroom offerings available for $1,350 to $1,975 a month. Some of the current Airbnb listings for rentals of single bedrooms inside apartments and homes on Capitol Hill ranged from $45 to $68 per night.

Justina Fugh, who has been ethics counsel at the EPA for a dozen years, said the arrangement wasn’t an ethics issue because Pruitt paid rent. An aide said the agency had not reviewed the arrangement in advance.

The payments covered Pruitt’s room in the two-bedroom unit, but did not afford him liberal use of common areas, where the owners had dinner parties and other functions, according to a person familiar with the situation. According to the lease agreement, Pruitt’s bedroom could not be locked.

ABC reported Friday that Pruitt’s college-age daughter used another room in the condo while serving as a White House intern. An email to agency representatives seeking comment on the report were not immediately returned.

After ABC News reported the living arrangement on Thursday, EPA aides had to seek documentation from the building’s owners to prove he had paid rent, raising concerns at the White House, said two of the people, who asked not to be named discussing a sensitive matter involving a Cabinet secretary. Pruitt was in Wyoming on Thursday.

The disclosure follows revelations about Pruitt’s reliance on first-class flights to travel around the globe and a series of pricey trips, including a visit by Pruitt and agency staff to Italy that cost $120,249. EPA officials have defended Pruitt’s use of first-class flights on security grounds, but after a series of reports, he shifted to coach.

J. Steven Hart is the chairman of Williams & Jensen, a firm with a stable of energy industry clients including Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., which paid the firm $400,000 in 2017, according to data compiled from the Environmental Integrity Project from disclosure forms.

Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, has been an enthusiastic crusader against Obama-era regulations meant to combat climate change and limit air pollution. When Pruitt was in Oklahoma, he sued the EPA more than a dozen times.  

Hart’s individual lobbying clients include liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy Inc.
Pruitt traveled to Morocco to tout U.S. liquefied natural gas last December, though the Department of Energy -- not the EPA -- plays the major federal role overseeing LNG exports. It is not clear Hart had direct contact with the EPA on behalf of any of his lobbying clients in 2017, according to a Bloomberg News review of disclosures.

Other individual clients of his are the American Automotive Policy Council and Smithfield Foods Inc.

Hart, in a statement to the Associated Press, described Pruitt as a friend from Oklahoma with whom he had scant contact.

“Pruitt signed a market based, short-term lease for a condo owned partially by my wife,” Hart said in a statement. “Pruitt paid all rent owed as agreed to in the lease. My wife does not, and has not ever lobbied the EPA on any matters."

Critics said the unorthodox rental arrangement allowing Pruitt exclusive, reserved use of the room raised questions and could violate a ban on federal government employees accepting gifts valued at more than $20.

“At the very least, it doesn’t look good for the administrator of EPA to have rented an apartment from the wife of an energy industry lobbyist who represents companies regulated by EPA," said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project.

The government watchdog group Public Citizen asked EPA’s inspector general to investigate.

"This appears to be a gift from a lobbyist to the EPA administrator," Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, said in a news release. "Scott Pruitt seems to be renting at well below market value – from a family member of a lobbyist who has business before the EPA."

Messages left with the Inspector General’s office weren’t immediately returned on Friday.

Fugh, the EPA’s ethics counsel, said no gift was involved. It was a routine business arrangement between Pruitt and an individual, not a lobbying firm, she added.

"He paid a fair price for what amounts to just a room,” Fugh said. “So I don’t even think that the fact that the house is owned by a person whose job is to be a lobbyist causes us concern.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Some more details about Pruitt's special living situation. I'm not quoting the whole article, but here are a few interesting points:

Quote

Though the condo lacked some of the amenities of traditional rentals, such as a full kitchen or phone line, $50 per night is an exceedingly good deal for a prime location near the Capitol. According to the website Inside Airbnb, which compiles data from rentals on the lodging site, the average price of a private room in a D.C. home is $113 per night. In the Capitol Hill neighborhood where Pruitt was, the average is $142 per night.

Quote

At one point during his stay, agents in Pruitt’s security detail broke an exterior door at the condo after he had gone home sick and was not responding to calls, according to individuals familiar with the March 2017 incident. The EPA ultimately reimbursed the condo association $2,460 for the cost of the wood and glass door.

Quote

Since last summer, Pruitt’s housing costs have escalated dramatically.

After leaving the Capitol Hill condo owned by Vicki Hart in July, Pruitt moved to a one-bedroom apartment in a newly constructed, upscale complex in the U Street neighborhood, according to an official with knowledge of the move. One-bedroom units in the building run about $3,000 to $3,500 monthly.

Several months later, he moved again, signing another lease in a new luxury apartment complex back on Capitol Hill. One-bedroom apartments in the building, which is owned by a large development company, start at about $3,100 per month and go to nearly $4,500.

All the while, Pruitt has maintained his primary residence in Tulsa — a sprawling, 5,518-square-foot mansion in an upscale neighborhood. The house is valued at $1,180,000, according to property records.

Oklahoma public records and Pruitt’s federal financial disclosures show that he and his wife purchased the house in early 2012, securing an $850,000 mortgage. At his current interest rate, Pruitt would be paying nearly $5,500 on his mortgage and property taxes.

 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The ethics-challenged administration continues: "EPA Chief’s $50-a-Night Rental Raises White House Angst"

  Reveal hidden contents

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt leased a Washington apartment owned by a lobbyist friend last year under terms that allowed him to pay $50 a night for a single bedroom -- but only on the nights when he actually slept there.

White House officials are growing dismayed about the questions surrounding Pruitt’s living arrangement, including his initial inability to produce any documentation about the lease or his actual payments, according to three officials. The landlord provided EPA officials with a copy of the lease and proof of the payments Pruitt made.

In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 to use the room for roughly six months, according to copies of rental checks reviewed by Bloomberg News. Those checks show varying amounts paid on sporadic dates -- not a traditional monthly "rent payment" of the same amount each month.

That was because of the unusual rent schedule -- not a single monthly amount, but a daily amount charged only for days used for a single bedroom in the two-bedroom unit just blocks from the Capitol. The building is at least partially owned by a health care lobbyist, Vicki Hart, via a limited liability corporation. Her husband J. Steven Hart, is also a lobbyist, whose firm represents clients in industries regulated by the EPA.

One person familiar with the lease compared it to an Airbnb-style arrangement, but Pruitt wasn’t a transient and instead made the apartment his home on nights he was in Washington. The lease -- also reviewed by Bloomberg -- says that he was charged $50 a night "based on days of actual occupancy."

Bloomberg reviewed six canceled checks paid by Pruitt totaling $6,100 from March 18 through Sept 1, 2017. He paid $450 on March 18, $900 on April 26, $850 on May 15, $700 on June 4, $1,500 on July 22 and $1,700 on Sept 1.

A sampling of current listings of apartments for rent near Pruitt’s temporary pad showed studio and one-bedroom offerings available for $1,350 to $1,975 a month. Some of the current Airbnb listings for rentals of single bedrooms inside apartments and homes on Capitol Hill ranged from $45 to $68 per night.

Justina Fugh, who has been ethics counsel at the EPA for a dozen years, said the arrangement wasn’t an ethics issue because Pruitt paid rent. An aide said the agency had not reviewed the arrangement in advance.

The payments covered Pruitt’s room in the two-bedroom unit, but did not afford him liberal use of common areas, where the owners had dinner parties and other functions, according to a person familiar with the situation. According to the lease agreement, Pruitt’s bedroom could not be locked.

ABC reported Friday that Pruitt’s college-age daughter used another room in the condo while serving as a White House intern. An email to agency representatives seeking comment on the report were not immediately returned.

After ABC News reported the living arrangement on Thursday, EPA aides had to seek documentation from the building’s owners to prove he had paid rent, raising concerns at the White House, said two of the people, who asked not to be named discussing a sensitive matter involving a Cabinet secretary. Pruitt was in Wyoming on Thursday.

The disclosure follows revelations about Pruitt’s reliance on first-class flights to travel around the globe and a series of pricey trips, including a visit by Pruitt and agency staff to Italy that cost $120,249. EPA officials have defended Pruitt’s use of first-class flights on security grounds, but after a series of reports, he shifted to coach.

J. Steven Hart is the chairman of Williams & Jensen, a firm with a stable of energy industry clients including Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., which paid the firm $400,000 in 2017, according to data compiled from the Environmental Integrity Project from disclosure forms.

Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, has been an enthusiastic crusader against Obama-era regulations meant to combat climate change and limit air pollution. When Pruitt was in Oklahoma, he sued the EPA more than a dozen times.  

Hart’s individual lobbying clients include liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy Inc.
Pruitt traveled to Morocco to tout U.S. liquefied natural gas last December, though the Department of Energy -- not the EPA -- plays the major federal role overseeing LNG exports. It is not clear Hart had direct contact with the EPA on behalf of any of his lobbying clients in 2017, according to a Bloomberg News review of disclosures.

Other individual clients of his are the American Automotive Policy Council and Smithfield Foods Inc.

Hart, in a statement to the Associated Press, described Pruitt as a friend from Oklahoma with whom he had scant contact.

“Pruitt signed a market based, short-term lease for a condo owned partially by my wife,” Hart said in a statement. “Pruitt paid all rent owed as agreed to in the lease. My wife does not, and has not ever lobbied the EPA on any matters."

Critics said the unorthodox rental arrangement allowing Pruitt exclusive, reserved use of the room raised questions and could violate a ban on federal government employees accepting gifts valued at more than $20.

“At the very least, it doesn’t look good for the administrator of EPA to have rented an apartment from the wife of an energy industry lobbyist who represents companies regulated by EPA," said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project.

The government watchdog group Public Citizen asked EPA’s inspector general to investigate.

"This appears to be a gift from a lobbyist to the EPA administrator," Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, said in a news release. "Scott Pruitt seems to be renting at well below market value – from a family member of a lobbyist who has business before the EPA."

Messages left with the Inspector General’s office weren’t immediately returned on Friday.

Fugh, the EPA’s ethics counsel, said no gift was involved. It was a routine business arrangement between Pruitt and an individual, not a lobbying firm, she added.

"He paid a fair price for what amounts to just a room,” Fugh said. “So I don’t even think that the fact that the house is owned by a person whose job is to be a lobbyist causes us concern.”

 

Hey don't diss on Scottie Poo. Trying to obey the law is so hard.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Guys you gotta get Trump out because he will kill us all. 

 

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not a done deal yet that dr. Ronny 'he's not obese' Jackson will be the new VA secretary. He needs to be confirmed by Congress, doesn't he? And he needs to have confirmation hearings first, right?

So all of this angst about him becoming the new VA secretary may be a storm in a tea-cup.

[GreyhoundFan]

12 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not a done deal yet that dr. Ronny 'he's not obese' Jackson will be the new VA secretary. He needs to be confirmed by Congress, doesn't he? And he needs to have confirmation hearings first, right?

So all of this angst about him becoming the new VA secretary may be a storm in a tea-cup.

Yes, but the Repugs in congress have shown little desire to do anything other than rubber-stamp Dumpy's noxious appointees. And he only has to be confirmed by a simple majority, which the Repugs still have.

[JMarie]

Shulkin wasn't fired on Wednesday, he resigned.  Does he know he resigned?

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/03/31/the-white-house-is-now-saying-that-va-secretary-david-shulkin-actually-resigned-and-wasnt-fired/23400146/

Quote

The White House said on Saturday that ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin resigned from his post earlier this week, contradicting Shulkin's claim that he was fired.

"Secretary Shulkin resigned from his position as Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs,” a White House spokesperson told Politico in response to questions about President Donald Trump's legal authority to appoint Shulkin's replacement.

Quote

Shulkin has repeatedly described his removal as a firing.

During an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes, Shulkin said he had no idea he was about to be terminated until White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called him to give him a heads up that Trump was about to let him go. Trump then announced Shulkin's ouster on Twitter.

Shulkin argued that he was removed for political reasons, and that certain officials within the VA were actively trying to get rid of him because of the direction in which he wanted to take the department.

 

[Cartmann99]

If Shulkin keeps loudly insisting he was fired, Spanky of Orange is going to give him a snappy nickname in his next batch of rage tweets.

[Howl]

And it gets worse, much worse, with the appointment of Robert Redfield to head the CDC.  This piece from Foreign Policy Web site sums up  horribleness that is Redfield's career and his HIV and AIDS policies. 

Meet Trump’s New, Homophobic Public Health Quack

[candygirl200413]

This makes me physically ill mainly because the CDC was my dream career but I really can't deal with someone who is this horrible of a person. The stories of his "HIV research" is absolutely heartbreaking.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The White House releases a photo of its interns, and the Internet asks: Why so few people of color?"

Spoiler

The latest class of White House interns is a reminder that diversity in government isn’t an issue only at senior levels; it starts at the bottom.

The White House released a photo Friday of its spring 2018 interns — and the Internet quickly noted a lack of people of color.

... < more tweets pointing out the lack of diversity >

On the other hand, it is possible that people of color weren’t eager to sign up to work in Trump’s White House. Some of the president’s lowest approval marks come from people of color and millennials, according to Gallup.

The absence of diversity in the White House and administration as a whole has attracted attention since the earliest days of the Trump presidency.

When Omarosa Manigault Newman left in December from her post as the director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, it was again a reminder of the absence of African Americans in senior positions in Trump’s White House. She was the only black senior adviser.

“As the only African American woman in this White House, as a senior staff and assistant to the president, I have seen things that have made me uncomfortable, that have upset me, that have affected me deeply and emotionally, that has affected my community and my people,” she told “Good Morning America” after her departure.

While there are notable people of color in the Trump administration — Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — Trump's Cabinet is predominantly white.

But the intern photo — and the photos of previous intern groups of the Trump White House — provided a window into understanding why there could be such low representation of people of color at top levels of the Trump administration: Diversity has to start at the bottom.

To quote Dumpy: SAD!

[AmazonGrace]