TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “…It’s become one of Trump’s defining characteristics, this disregard for experts. He’s called Labor Department estimates of the unemployment rate ‘totally fiction,’ and pressured the head of the National Park Service to back up his inflated account of his inauguration crowd size. During the campaign he admitted to getting his military advice by ‘watching the shows.’ And now — with various hirings, including the recent addition of cable news personality Larry Kudlow as the director of the National Economic Council and rumors that he’ll make Fox News’s Pete Hegseth the veterans affairs secretary — the talking heads are trading in the green room for the White House.To make matters worse, of the 647 key positions in the executive branch that require Senate confirmation, only 293 have been confirmed. The consequences could be dire. Without highly trained people in government, the nation could stumble into a trade war, or perhaps a nuclear one.”
–Ben Terris, “Experts agree: Trump has made Washington hostile to experts,” The Washington Post, Mar. 28, 2018 7:00am