A combination of Republican Party hesitancy and insider infighting has led the White House to pull an unheard of number of presidenitialnominations lest they falter and embarrass the Donald Trump administration.
According to a report from Politico, during the first year of Trump’s first administration, he withdrew 22 nominations. With the first year of Trump’s second term concluding in mid-January, 55 nominations have been pulled or tabled.
The report noted that there are a multitude of reasons for the withdrawals, including the president’s ever-changing “mercurial views,” as the White House experiences “clear signs of breakdowns behind the scenes.”
“The pace of withdrawals, the highest since at least the Ronald Reagan presidency, has flown below the radar in the day-to-day churn on Capitol Hill, with many Republican senators expressing surprise at the data in interviews,” Politico reported while noting the White House, in some cases, pressed ahead without first making sure it had the votes to get the nominees approved.
Case in point was the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which went down in flames due to his well-documented history of inflammatory and racist comments.
One White House insider admitted, “Would I say some vetting has been questionable? One thousand percent,” before adding, “That was a vetting nightmare that was only allowed to happen based on certain relationships and acquaintances with people that are making the decisions.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) agreed and suggested the White House should slow its pace and get it right, telling Politico, “Sometimes the advice is to maybe reconsider something. You don’t have to make a big deal out of it, but you can share that with the administration. And sometimes they take a second look at the nominee, and they say, ‘You know, yeah, you’re right.’”
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