President struggles to fill jobs when total loyalty is a must

MELBOURNE, Fla. — During President Donald Trump's transition to power, his team reached out to Elliott Abrams for help building a new administration. Abrams, a seasoned Republican foreign policy official, sent lists of possible candidates for national security jobs.

One by one, the answer from the Trump team came back no. The reason was consistent: This one had said disparaging things about Trump during the campaign; that one had signed a letter opposing him. Finally, the White House asked Abrams himself to meet with the president about becoming deputy secretary of state, only to have the same thing happen — vetoed because of past criticism.

Abrams' experience has become a case study in the challenges Trump still faces in filling top positions a month into his presidency. Trump remains fixated on the campaign as he applies a loyalty test to some prospective officials. Many Republicans reacted to what happened to Abrams with dismay, leaving them increasingly leery about joining an administration that cannot get past the past.

As Trump brings candidates for national security adviser to meet with him in Florida this weekend, he presides over a government where the upper echelons remain sparsely populated. Six of the 15 statutory Cabinet secretaries are still awaiting Senate confirmation as Democrats nearly uniformly oppose almost all of the president's choices. Even some of the Cabinet secretaries who are in place may feel they are home alone.

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It is not just Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson who has no deputy secretary, much less Trump-appointed undersecretaries or assistant secretaries. Neither do the heads of the Treasury Department, the Education Department or any of the other Cabinet departments. Only three of 15 nominees have been named for deputy secretary positions. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has a deputy only because he kept the one left over from President Barack Obama's administration.

That does not even begin to cover the rest of the more than 4,000 appointments that a president typically makes. In some cases, the Trump administration is even going in reverse. A senior political appointee at the housing department, who had started the job, was fired this past week and marched out of the building when someone discovered his previous statements critical of Trump.

The president's top Latin America official at the National Security Council was likewise fired after just weeks on the job for complaining about internal dysfunction at an off-the-record discussion at a Washington research organization, according to officials, who confirmed a Politico report. The State Department has laid off six top career officials in recent days, apparently out of questions about their loyalty to Trump.

"Many tough things were said about him and by him" before last year's election, Abrams, who served as President Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state and President George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser, said in an interview. "I would have hoped he would have turned toward just hiring the most effective people to help him govern rather than looking back to what we said in that race."

Trump has fallen behind the pace of his last three predecessors in naming senior officials who require Senate confirmation and in securing their confirmations, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. Whereas Obama had nominated 40 senior officials by Feb. 11, 2009, Trump had named 34 of them as of Friday. Obama had 24 confirmed at that point, while Trump has 14.

The trouble assembling an administration reflects the deeper rift between Trump and the Washington establishment of both parties. A reality-show businessman with no government experience, Trump catapulted to power on a promise to break up the system. Even after he won the Republican nomination last year, he did little to win over those who had opposed him, while his "never Trump" critics within the party kept up a steady assault on his qualifications and temperament.

Trump faces other hurdles, too. With no cadre ready to go from past political service, he has been starting from scratch. His team has been slow to vet candidates, and in some cases his choices have had troubles with their business backgrounds or other matters. And Democrats have mounted a wall of resistance to his nominations, slowing the process down.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but Trump has disputed reports of troubles. "The White House is running so smoothly, so smoothly," he told a rally of supporters in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday. "And believe me, we inherited one big mess, that I can tell you."

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The ill will between Trump and much of the Republican establishment works both ways. Many Republicans who might have agreed to work for the president have been turned off by what they consider his sometimes erratic behavior and the competing power centers inside his White House. After firing his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, Trump found that his initial choice for a replacement, Robert S. Harward, a retired vice admiral, would not take the job.

"The problem is that with each successive episode, it raises the stakes for the next one," said Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University professor who was a strategic planning adviser to Bush. "It's going to be hard for the next outsider to accept the national security job and not request the ability to make personnel changes."

Richard N. Haass, a former Republican official and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump had "ruled out much of an entire generation of Republican public policy types" and alarmed others with his empowerment of Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist, to shape national security. Even some Cabinet secretaries appear unable to pick their own staff.

"This is unprecedented, it's untraditional, it's outside the mainstream," said Haass, whose own name had been floated for a position. "And so it's just that you'd be signing on for, at a minimum, tremendous uncertainty, and quite possibly for being associated with a set of policies you deeply disagree with."

Stuart Holliday, an ambassador under Bush, said many Republicans would want to work for Tillerson or Mattis. "However, the Republican foreign policy bench is not that deep at senior levels," he said, "especially if you factor in people who took themselves off the field."

Former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said the business veterans that Trump had enlisted for his Cabinet were "the most positive thing about his administration so far." But he added that the president's disregard for advice could complicate his efforts to fill posts. "You get the feeling that he's still flying by his own experiences," he said, "and that's got to concern anyone who cares about these issues."

For Trump, the challenge is more pronounced because he and his advisers feel they cannot trust some of the senior career professionals still working at the White House or Cabinet departments. Leaks about Flynn and Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders have convinced White House officials that they face an opposition within.

"You have a new administration that also has fewer people familiar with the processes and systems of government, including the importance of the vetting process," said Max Stier, chief executive of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service. "You can't operate as they did in the campaign context, with a smaller than usual group — it doesn't work."

Trump's failure to vet candidates in advance has led to some stumbles. A White House scheduler was fired this past week because of an issue that surfaced in her background check, something that normally would have been completed weeks ago.

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Another challenge has been Trump's implementation of ethics rules that bar White House officials from lobbying for five years after they leave the government, prompting senior congressional officials and lobbyists to demur.

Trump has faulted the Democratic minority in the Senate for obstructing his choices. Democrats have voted almost as a bloc against many of his nominees, breaking with tradition in which the opposition party largely went along with a president's selections, except in specific cases of controversy. "The Democrats are making it very difficult," Trump said at his news conference Thursday. "This is pure delay tactics."

Despite his own experience, one person still urging Republicans to take jobs in the administration is Abrams. "I have been encouraging everybody to go into the government if offered an appropriate position," he said. "That was my view, and it's still my view, because you have one president and one government at a time."

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Peter Baker reported from West Palm Beach, Florida, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Washington. Adam Goldman contributed reporting from Washington.