The presidential transition is a curious ritual. Personnel is policy: Cabinet and staffing picks signal the administration's real priorities. And yet because these decisions take place during the interregnum, an uncanny period when the outgoing president is still in office (in body, if not in mind), a sense of pageantry and weightlessness attends the whole thing, as if the incoming president were merely casting a film about the White House.
Trump selects candidates for top jobs who look the part and doubts those who don't; he memorably didn't hire John Bolton because he despised Bolton's slovenly mustache. Trump promised this second transition would be 'as smooth as it can get.' Instead, it has been a captivating mix of chaos, vitriol, backstabbing, and deviance.
Trump's nominee for attorney general, then-Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration amid allegations of drug use and sleeping with an underage prostitute... At the end of November, Trump ordered an investigation of his own close ally Boris Epshteyn for allegedly selling influence in the transition.
Finally, three weeks after naming veteran GOP attorney Bill McGinley as White House counsel, Trump replaced him with David Warrington, a 2024 campaign lawyer.
#trump-transition #presidential-politics #cabinet-appointments #administrative-chaos #political-controversy
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