Trump White House Saw Record Number of First-Year Staff Departures
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...ber-of-first-year-staff-departures/ar-BBHreeD
President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired after 25 days on the job. Two high-profile campaign aides who followed him into the White House, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, were gone before summer’s end. And his third communications director’s tenure is still remembered around the West Wing as “Scaramucci Week.”
Those are just a few of the first-year departures from high level positions in the Trump administration, which has been marked by a level of staff turnover unprecedented in the modern era.
According to Kathryn Dunn-Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has tracked White House turnover rates over three decades, the Trump administration’s 34% turnover rate—21 of the 61 senior officials she has tracked have resigned, been fired or reassigned—is much higher than that of any other administration in the last 40 years, which is as far back as Ms. Dunn-Tenpas’s analysis goes. The presidency with the next-highest first-year turnover rate was Ronald Reagan’s, with 17% of senior aides leaving the administration in 1981.
“Not only is the percentage double, the seniority of people leaving is extraordinarily high,” said Ms. Dunn-Tenpas. “That’s unprecedented to me. The first year always seems to have some missteps on staffing, often because the skills that worked well running a campaign don’t always align with what it takes to run a government. In this case, it’s a president with no experience in government and people around him who also had no experience,” she continued. “So it’s not surprising that it’s higher than normal, but it’s still surprising it’s this high.”
Mr. Trump’s first-year turnover rate is three times higher than both Barack Obama’s 9% and Bill Clinton’s 11%.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. A senior administration official, speaking to reporters last week said the turnover shouldn’t be interpreted as a series of hiring mistakes.
“Is it a mistake to have to fire people? You’re asking, did he make a mistake in hiring them in the first place? You have to be more specific about people,” the senior administration official responded. “I know we love to learn the more generic points of palace intrigue than the finer points of policy sometimes, but we have a really good team here. And we have a team that is very well managed by the chief of staff.”
Many inside the administration credit chief of staff John Kelly, who succeeded Mr. Priebus in July, with bringing greater stability to the West Wing. The communications department, initially a main source of agitation for Mr. Trump, has also stabilized with adviser Hope Hicks, the fourth White House communications director to hold the position this year after Anthony Scaramucci’s firing. Mr. Kelly’s housecleaning continued with Mr. Bannon’s ouster.
Mr. Kelly’s appointment as chief of staff left a vacancy at the Department of Homeland Security, which he was appointed to lead in January. His six-month tenure there is the shortest in the agency’s history. He was succeeded by his deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, who was confirmed earlier this month.
Still, the personnel churn “is really destabilizing to the institution,” Ms. Dunn-Tenpas said. “Every time there’s turnover, they’ve got to hire someone new and spend time training them. And when you pull someone from one important position to another, there’s this domino effect.”
As an antiestablishment outsider, Mr. Trump has continued to rely on a small circle of advisers—as he did during his campaign—placing a high priority on loyalty and leaving hundreds of other top jobs across the federal government vacant as part of his stated effort to reduce the size of government.
During the transition, Mr. Trump mostly avoided hiring Republicans who had been critical of him or who worked for organizations opposing him during the campaign. Many experienced Washington hands who could have applied for positions stayed away.
“It’s hard getting beyond that inner circle because of his lack of trust with people he doesn’t know,” said one high-level GOP ally who worked on the presidential transition. “But it’s also been the case that he makes snap decisions and winds up with people who are not great fits.”
Mr. Trump ignored multiple warnings not to hire Mr. Flynn as national security adviser from President Obama, his initial transition chief Gov. Chris Christie and others. Ultimately, Mr. Flynn’s firing in February for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian officials and the eventual ouster of his deputy, K.T. McFarland, prompted additional turnover on the National Security Council as H.R. McMaster took charge.
Mr. Trump at times has filled vacancies by hiring from within his small group of trusted advisers. Mick Mulvaney, executive director of the Office of Management and Budget, is currently overseeing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as interim director after its past director’s resignation last month.
Another factor in the fluid personnel situation is special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign, which is likely to extend into 2018. The president has called the investigation a “witch hunt” and Moscow has denied inferring in the election; the U.S. intelligence community in January 2017 concluded that Russia had meddled in the campaign.
If history is any guide, turnover will be even higher in the second year. According to Ms. Dunn-Tenpas’s research, Mr. Reagan’s turnover jumped from 17% in 1981 to 40% in 1982. Mr. Clinton lost 27% of his key advisers in year two and President George W. Bush, who lost just 6% of senior aides in a first year, saw 27% of them leave the following year.
Deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn both announced this month that they plan to depart early next year as the administration hits the one-year mark; Omarosa Manigault Newman, an adviser to the president, also resigned effective Jan. 20, although the terms of her departure are less clear.
“Every chief executive has his or her own style, as does President Trump,” said Jim Wolbarsht, a Republican who has held appointed positions in five administrations and been a member of multiple federal advisory boards. “He seems to rely a lot less on existing institutions and structures than previous presidents.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...ber-of-first-year-staff-departures/ar-BBHreeD
President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired after 25 days on the job. Two high-profile campaign aides who followed him into the White House, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, were gone before summer’s end. And his third communications director’s tenure is still remembered around the West Wing as “Scaramucci Week.”
Those are just a few of the first-year departures from high level positions in the Trump administration, which has been marked by a level of staff turnover unprecedented in the modern era.
According to Kathryn Dunn-Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has tracked White House turnover rates over three decades, the Trump administration’s 34% turnover rate—21 of the 61 senior officials she has tracked have resigned, been fired or reassigned—is much higher than that of any other administration in the last 40 years, which is as far back as Ms. Dunn-Tenpas’s analysis goes. The presidency with the next-highest first-year turnover rate was Ronald Reagan’s, with 17% of senior aides leaving the administration in 1981.
“Not only is the percentage double, the seniority of people leaving is extraordinarily high,” said Ms. Dunn-Tenpas. “That’s unprecedented to me. The first year always seems to have some missteps on staffing, often because the skills that worked well running a campaign don’t always align with what it takes to run a government. In this case, it’s a president with no experience in government and people around him who also had no experience,” she continued. “So it’s not surprising that it’s higher than normal, but it’s still surprising it’s this high.”
Mr. Trump’s first-year turnover rate is three times higher than both Barack Obama’s 9% and Bill Clinton’s 11%.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. A senior administration official, speaking to reporters last week said the turnover shouldn’t be interpreted as a series of hiring mistakes.
“Is it a mistake to have to fire people? You’re asking, did he make a mistake in hiring them in the first place? You have to be more specific about people,” the senior administration official responded. “I know we love to learn the more generic points of palace intrigue than the finer points of policy sometimes, but we have a really good team here. And we have a team that is very well managed by the chief of staff.”
Many inside the administration credit chief of staff John Kelly, who succeeded Mr. Priebus in July, with bringing greater stability to the West Wing. The communications department, initially a main source of agitation for Mr. Trump, has also stabilized with adviser Hope Hicks, the fourth White House communications director to hold the position this year after Anthony Scaramucci’s firing. Mr. Kelly’s housecleaning continued with Mr. Bannon’s ouster.
Mr. Kelly’s appointment as chief of staff left a vacancy at the Department of Homeland Security, which he was appointed to lead in January. His six-month tenure there is the shortest in the agency’s history. He was succeeded by his deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, who was confirmed earlier this month.
Still, the personnel churn “is really destabilizing to the institution,” Ms. Dunn-Tenpas said. “Every time there’s turnover, they’ve got to hire someone new and spend time training them. And when you pull someone from one important position to another, there’s this domino effect.”
As an antiestablishment outsider, Mr. Trump has continued to rely on a small circle of advisers—as he did during his campaign—placing a high priority on loyalty and leaving hundreds of other top jobs across the federal government vacant as part of his stated effort to reduce the size of government.
During the transition, Mr. Trump mostly avoided hiring Republicans who had been critical of him or who worked for organizations opposing him during the campaign. Many experienced Washington hands who could have applied for positions stayed away.
“It’s hard getting beyond that inner circle because of his lack of trust with people he doesn’t know,” said one high-level GOP ally who worked on the presidential transition. “But it’s also been the case that he makes snap decisions and winds up with people who are not great fits.”
Mr. Trump ignored multiple warnings not to hire Mr. Flynn as national security adviser from President Obama, his initial transition chief Gov. Chris Christie and others. Ultimately, Mr. Flynn’s firing in February for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian officials and the eventual ouster of his deputy, K.T. McFarland, prompted additional turnover on the National Security Council as H.R. McMaster took charge.
Mr. Trump at times has filled vacancies by hiring from within his small group of trusted advisers. Mick Mulvaney, executive director of the Office of Management and Budget, is currently overseeing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as interim director after its past director’s resignation last month.
Another factor in the fluid personnel situation is special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign, which is likely to extend into 2018. The president has called the investigation a “witch hunt” and Moscow has denied inferring in the election; the U.S. intelligence community in January 2017 concluded that Russia had meddled in the campaign.
If history is any guide, turnover will be even higher in the second year. According to Ms. Dunn-Tenpas’s research, Mr. Reagan’s turnover jumped from 17% in 1981 to 40% in 1982. Mr. Clinton lost 27% of his key advisers in year two and President George W. Bush, who lost just 6% of senior aides in a first year, saw 27% of them leave the following year.
Deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn both announced this month that they plan to depart early next year as the administration hits the one-year mark; Omarosa Manigault Newman, an adviser to the president, also resigned effective Jan. 20, although the terms of her departure are less clear.
“Every chief executive has his or her own style, as does President Trump,” said Jim Wolbarsht, a Republican who has held appointed positions in five administrations and been a member of multiple federal advisory boards. “He seems to rely a lot less on existing institutions and structures than previous presidents.”
