This is astounding news. None other than spinmeister Sarah Huckabee Sanders is supposed to be leaving the White House at the end of the year, and she’s not alone. Deputy press secretary Raj Shah is supposed to be leaving and others. CBS News:
“There will be even more people leaving the White House sooner rather than later, laid off or just leaving out of exhaustion. And it is going to be harder to find good people to replace them,” a source close to the administration told CBS News. “I do think they’re going to have a harder time getting the second wave of people in than the first, because those people were loyalists, and [new] folks will have to be recruited and encouraged and then survive the vetting process. In addition to all of that, the president prefers to have a small communications staff.”
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied turnover dating back to the Reagan administration, published a report that tracks senior-level departures of the Trump administration compared to previous presidencies. She told CBS News that the sheer number of top-level exits indicates a troubling inconsistency in the ranks of those who see the president on a regular basis.
If the White House were a private-sector business, Tenpas said the level of turnover among senior staffers would result in the “stock and shareholders … going nuts.”
The obvious irony is that Trump was going to run the country like it was a successful business. What successful business has a 51 percent turnover, unfilled positions, and last but not least, a CEO who is either watching television, tweeting, or golfing?
There are rumors that Trump will just leave the press secretary position unfilled. Since Trump doesn’t give press conferences, that would leave nobody communicating with the press from the White House. This will be an interesting news story to follow up on, to be sure.
