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A man who is not qualified to be president would, of course, surround himself with people who are also not qualified for their positions.
Trump has made several hires in the past three years that were controversial. Some of these were followed up with equally controversial resignations or firings (not to mention the indictments.)
But some of those unqualified people still remain in his administration….
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Stephanie Grisham took over as Trump’s press secretary after Sarah Huckabee Sanders vacated the role in August of 2019.
Besides the fact that Press Secretary Grisham refuses to do press briefings, she also has a criminal record to boot. She has TWICE been arrested for DUI—once while working for the Trump campaign—and she was also let go from her position as spokesperson for AAA in Arizona for filing false expense reports.
The Trump administration is apparently quite aware of her past as Grisham claims she “disclosed both episodes to the White House.”
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Perhaps one of the most baffling members of the Trump administration is Paula White, a televangelist who is advising Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
She is an advocate of the prosperity gospel, the idea that God wants people to have wealth and health.
White bills herself as Trump’s “top spiritual advisor.” She has told people who attended her events to avoid paying their electricity bills and instead, send her own organization the money.
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In 2016, Trump announced he would appoint Former Texas governor Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy. Perry resigned in 2019 after his involvement in the Ukraine scandal came to light.
While in his position, Perry ignored climate change and tried to push for the salvation of coal.
Trump donor and coal magnate Robert Murray was photographed hugging Perry after presenting him with a plan to save coal companies. Perry also had a campaign to “make nuclear cool again,” in an attempt to get young people interested in working with nuclear energy.
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In February 2017, Steve Mnuchin was sworn in as Treasury Secretary.
Notably, Mnuchin failed to disclose $100 million in assets, and he previously ran “a foreclosure machine” during the economic crisis.
Democrat Senator Ron Wyden said that “When I look at Mr. Mnuchin’s background, it’s a stretch to find evidence he’d be that kind of Treasury secretary.”
In 2018, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that Mnuchin had spent $1 million in taxpayer dollars on travel expenses. He even requested government resources while on his honeymoon.
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Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to Trump, stayed in his role for a total of seven months before resigning. According to one White House insider, “his only job appears to be to go on talk radio or Fox News to defend the indefensible.”
The Rolling Stone said, “It’s not easy to find out exactly what Gorka does in the White House for his $155,000 salary.”
A former Breitbart national security editor, Gorka worked closely with Steve Bannon while the two were in the White House.
Gorka resigned because “the fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost.”
There was a warrant for Gorka’s arrest in Hungary while he served in the White House. Allegedly, he was wanted for “firearm or ammunition abuse” which oddly didn’t stop him from traveling to Europe with Secretary of State Pompeo in October of last year.
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Pruitt was appointed as head of the EPA in 2017, a baffling choice given his position as a defender of Exxon Mobile.
At the time of his appointment, Pruitt was one of the EPA’s biggest protesters. He had also joined a 28 state legal action campaign against the Clean Power Plan.
When Pruitt resigned in 2018, he was the subject of 13 federal investigations. Officials were looking into things like whether he purchased a $43,000 telephone booth, and whether he leased a condo in a building linked to an energy company’s lobbying firm.
His signature trademark was urging Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
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Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, almost completely dismantled the diplomatic corps in the State Department.
Paul Musgrave, a scholar of US foreign policy at the University of Massachusetts, called Tillerson “at the bottom or near the bottom of the list of secretaries of state.”
While the Trump administration was expanding the defense budget, Tillerson was slashing the State Department’s budget. Cuts were made to the money spent on promoting refugees’ rights, H.I.V. prevention, and women’s rights.
Tillerson was famously fired by Trump via Twitter.
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Michael Flynn briefly served as the National Security Advisor until February 2017.
He lied to the FBI concerning contact he had had with Russia. Flynn later registered as a foreign agent and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI concerning the Mueller investigation.
Flynn was also a conspiracy theorist. He is known for his retweet of a theory claiming Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex-trafficking ring.
He also had his own ideas about border security. “He believes Islamists have infiltrated the Mexican border en masse, guided along the way by Arabic-language signs Flynn claims to have seen himself,” says NY Magazine.
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Sean Spicer was the White House press secretary for a total of six months and one day.
During his time in that position, Spicer overruled previous conventions of the press, ignored mainstream and traditional media outlets, and allowed right-wing organizations like Lifezette the ability to ask questions first.
He was also the press secretary who claimed that photos of the inauguration crowd were “intentionally framed to minimize.” He also publically claimed that “Hitler didn’t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons.”
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The current senior policy advisor is Stephen Miller—the person behind the separation of families at the border and the infamous travel ban.
He started as an aide to Jeff Sessions before joining the Trump campaign as the senior policy advisor.
Since then, he has become one of Trump’s closest advisors.
Miller has been the one who has pushed the hardest for “zero tolerance.” He has penned harsh negotiations and tried to cap the number of refugees that come into America to zero.
27 senators publicly called for his removal in December of last year.
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Carson was appointed head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2016.
Since then, he has defended the Trump administration’s plan to evict undocumented immigrants from government housing saying, “It seems only logical that taxpaying American citizens should be taken care of first.”
He has appointed close friends to positions in the agency that may not have been qualified for the job.
Carson also arranged for “opportunity zones” for tax relief in expensive neighborhoods in Florida, benefiting the wealthy.
At the time of his appointment, Carson had argued that he was not capable of running an agency. His business manager told the Hill, “He has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.”
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The Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has had some truly clueless moments.
She has never worked in education as a teacher, administrator, or even bureaucrat. In her confirmation hearings, she had no familiarity with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and even said that students in Montana might need guns to protect themselves against bears.
She was sued in 2017 for violating federal law by revoking the Borrowers Defense Rule.
DeVos also rescinded sexual assault guidelines and put in place rules that allowed victims of assault to be cross-examined.
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Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump, had to have his father-in-law request a top-security clearance from General Kelly, who was uncomfortable with the request.
Kushner’s financial scandals loom: he met with banking executives in the White House, who then loaned his family massive sums of money; his family owes $600 million on a tower in New York City; and his father was arrested in 2005 for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering.
These conflicts of interest followed Kushner to the White House, and it is said that foreign officials have discussed using them against him in manipulations.
Flickr / U.S. Department of State
The daughter of the president, along with her husband Jared, “have emerged as President Trump’s most important advisers,” according to the New York Times.
However, critics have pointed out that neither of them has held public positions.
Ivanka Trump has acted as a sort of “secretary of state,” according to CNN, in public situations that require diplomacy. Chris Cilliza wrote, “None of that is normal.”
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Richard Grenell, the next acting director of national intelligence, was nominated by Trump in 2020 is (no surprise) a former Fox News commentator.
Recently, Grenell was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and a staunch defender of the administration’s policies on social media. He has little experience with national intelligence.
Trump’s appointment breaks tradition, which would have required a director with experience in both national security issues and the law.
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Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke faced many allegations of misconduct when he resigned in December 2018.
After pledging to be like Theodore Roosevelt, Zinke opened up several of the U.S.’s coasts and public lands for oil and gas leasing. He also recommended that four national monuments be shrunk.
The chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks Phil Francis said, “during his time as Secretary, our national parks faced unprecedented threats and suffered from a clear lack of support.”
Zinke made a land deal in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, which involved a business run by his wife and a chairman in an oil company. The interior’s acting inspector general opened an investigation into it.
