NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “When President Donald Trump asked Hope Hicks to step into the role of communications director, his longtime aide hesitated before taking on a management position overseeing more than 40 staffers who work in White House media relations…
After a summer of distracting staff churn, the communications director job is just one of a number of top-level West Wing positions that has ultimately been filled by an existing staffer — or not filled at all — after an official has quit or been let go.
Interviews with six White House staffers and people close to the president attribute Trump’s shrinking West Wing to three factors: chief of staff John Kelly’s careful review process, which has led to the paring down of an organization that many inside complained was top-heavy; the chilling factor of five open-ended Russia investigations hanging over the White House, making it hard to attract new talent; and the president’s own dark mood this summer, which has left him increasingly isolated and in the mood to hunker down, not hire up…
Kelly is now mulling a system in which the chief of staff, the staff secretary and the White House counsel would serve as the only direct reports to the president, cutting out any space for a chief strategist to directly influence the president’s thinking…
But at other levels, the problem has been recruiting people to join a White House where five major investigations — four overseen by congressional committees and one run by special counsel Robert Mueller — are the background static of daily work life, uncomfortable to listen to but hard to tune out…
The easy pipeline to RNC staffers, which existed under former RNC chair Priebus, has dried up with his departure from the West Wing. And even Trump loyalists who support the president from the outside said they have been crossing their fingers that the president doesn’t approach them with a direct plea to join his administration. Others, who said they would have joined the administration back in January with no hesitation, said that calculation has become more complicated in the wake of Trump’s Charlottesville comments and other self-created crises.”
-Annie Karni, “Trump’s shrinking West Wing,” Politico, Aug. 30, 2017 04:57am