Trump’s ‘Happy Place’ White House Gets Slow-Motion Face-Lift
Next on the list could be Homeland Security, where Secretary Nielsen has faced months of withering criticism, say sources.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump is continuing a slow-motion face-lift of his administration that started the day after a wave of Republican losses in the November midterm elections.
After removing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump took a month before ousting his chief of staff, John Kelly with no successor in place. The count rose to three on Saturday, when the president said Ryan Zinke, besieged with ethics investigations in his tenure as Secretary of Interior, would soon step down.
Next on the list could be Homeland Security, people familiar with the matter said, where Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has faced months of withering criticism from the president that her border enforcement hasn’t been tough enough. Trump has also mused about a possible replacement for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and certain West Wing staff, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Trump’s inner circle makeover got off to a bumpy start when his first pick to replace Kelly -- Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence -- turned down the job, leaving the president without a plan B. The appointment of Ayers, an experienced political operative, had been seen as key to helping Trump reshuffle staff in the West Wing and Cabinet, and to help the president position himself for a tough re-election fight with Democrats who’ll control the House of Representatives from January.
Failed Courtships
Trump settled on the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to lead his fractious staff after a week of failed courtships and embarrassing rejections that seemed to underscore the undesirability of working for an erratic president facing an array of legal troubles.
But Trump on Saturday offered a different view.
“The White House is a happy place,” he told reporters as he arrived at the Congressional Ball that he and wife Melania hosted. He added that the administration is going to resume working on an infrastructure plan in 2019 -- one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement that fizzled during the president’s first two years in office amid fights over immigration and health care.
Ross Digs In
While Trump is weighing a shakeup at the top of the Commerce Department, it’s unclear whether he’ll follow through. Ross is pushing to keep the job, administration officials said. Rather than cave to expected pressure from Congressional Democrats, Ross has been gearing up for a fight over the Census citizenship question controversy and even a potential probe of his own finances and possible conflicts of interest.
In White House meetings the 81-year-old has been exhibiting the image of someone settling in for the long-term rather than heading for the exits, one person familiar with the situation said. His defenders also blame the whispers about Ross’s future on rivals in the administration who either don’t like his approach to trade or want his job.
Ross sought early on to be Trump’s trade czar and led the initial negotiations with China and over the updating of Nafta. But he’s been largely sidelined on the trade front in recent months. When Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping for dinner in Buenos Aires on Dec. 1 he was accompanied by a half-dozen top advisers. Ross wasn’t among them.
But Ross has found other ways to play an active role in the administration and has maintained close contact with the president. A longtime fixture on the social scene in Palm Beach, where he and his wife have an estate, Ross flew down to Florida with the president on Air Force One for Thanksgiving.
“Secretary Wilbur Ross is doing a great job advancing the President’s agenda for all Americans. Any reporting to the contrary is flat out wrong and simply fake news,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Sunday.
Thankless Job
Trump has also talked to aides about replacing Nielsen, who’s been responsible for implementing his immigration policies, including separating undocumented migrant children from their families. The Washington Post reported last month that Trump planned to oust Nielsen in the coming weeks.
Trump publicly expressed frustration about security at the U.S. southern border as a caravan of thousands of Central Americans made its way north. Tensions erupted on Oct. 18 in a profanity-laced argument outside the Oval Office, when National Security Adviser John Bolton criticized the performance of Nielsen’s department and Kelly defended her.
Nielsen’s responsible for carrying out some of Trump’s highest-profile campaign promises, notably efforts to build a wall along the Mexican border.
She’s faced criticism from Trump over things she can’t control, including court rulings against his plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program, his frequently stalled ban on refugees from predominantly Muslim nations, and a perceived inability to effectively secure or choke off border crossings.
Tear Gas
At the same time, she’s endured harsh criticism from Democrats over family separations, border agents’ use of tear gas on migrant crowds that included children, and the recent death of a seven-year-old migrant girl in the custody of U.S. authorities.
The importance of the Homeland Security job to Trump was clear ahead of the midterm elections, when the president tweeted frequently about the threats he said were posed by the migrant caravan, and made the threat of violent gangsters crossing the border a feature of his campaign rallies.
Trump announced Zinke’s imminent departure Saturday on Twitter, a day after capping the hasty week-long search for a chief of staff. While Trump didn’t provide a reason for Zinke’s departure, the interior secretary said he wants to avoid a crush of legal bills as Democratic lawmakers have vowed to grill him over a swirl of ethics probes into his conduct.
The Interior Department’s inspector general had initiated at least seven investigations directly targeting Zinke. A separate independent federal investigative agency also has opened as many as six other inquiries into allegations Zinke engaged in improper political activity -- a volume that invited comparisons to the ousted Environmental Protection Agency chief, Scott Pruitt.
David Bernhardt, the agency’s No. 2 official, is a possible successor as acting Interior Secretary. A number of current and former Republican lawmakers, mostly from western states, may be under consideration. Trump said he would announce his pick this week.
--With assistance from Margaret Talev.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net;Shawn Donnan in Washington at sdonnan@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, Ros Krasny
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