Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:31 pm
Remember when Republican national security experts signed a letter vowing not to support Donald Trump? Well, it turns out they meant it. Donald Trump is having a hard time staffing intelligence and homeland security positions because so many Republican experts refuse to work for him.
“Team Trump is struggling to fill numerous key slots or even attract many candidates because hundreds have either sworn they’d never work in a Trump administration or have directly turned down requests to join,” according to The Daily Beast exclusive by Kimberly Dozier and Shane Harris, who spoke to “multiple current and former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the transition efforts.”
For over a month they’ve been trying to staff up but “they met resistance across the landscape of experienced GOP national security professionals.”
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Why won’t they work for Trump? “One person who met last month with Trump’s national security and homeland security transition team leader said that she confessed that many candidates had flatly rejected attempts to recruit them, believing that Trump was unfit to hold the office of commander-in-chief.”
It gets worse, as this person told the Daily Beast the transition team leader wasn’t sure she could man the transition team, “much less find people to serve in government positions.”
“In theory, 20 people are supposed to parachute into the Department of Homeland Security [during the transition between administrations]. And I don’t think they have anybody to do it.â€
Well, there you go. Donald Trump was going to get all of the best people. In an effort to put to rest fears that he didn’t know anything about the job he was seeking, he said, “I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people.”
But Donald Trump repels people who actually know things. And so now Donald Trump, who claimed he knew more than the generals, can’t get Republican national security experts to work for him.
We knew Donald Trump was going to be dangerous, and we knew he was going to be incompetent, but this takes the cake. He hasn’t even taken office yet, and he’s already a joke who is endangering our safety.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
