Trump Said to Have Political Aides Monitoring the Loyalty of Cabinet Secretaries [View all]

[n2doc]

As President Trump recently reminded us, when someone has been disloyal to him he never forgets it. But now that he’s president, it’s become more difficult to keep track of those who have defied him – or may potentially defy him. That’s why, according to the Washington Post, he’s embedded political appointees in every Cabinet agency, and tasked them with keeping tabs on the secretaries’ fealty to the president. Unsurprisingly, this is not going over well with some Cabinet members.

The Post is not the first to note the existence of these monitors. Last month Politico reported that the Trump administration had created the new position of “senior White House adviser” within each agency, placing many former campaign aides in those jobs. Records obtained by ProPublica show that there are at least 16 of these advisers, with Trump loyalists stationed in all the major departments and in some smaller agencies like NASA.

There’s some disagreement on who the advisers answer to. The Post says they report to the Office of Cabinet Affairs, which is overseen by White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn. An anonymous White House official said the advisers technically report to the head of each agency, but the White House would not discuss the matter on the record.

The advisers’ ostensible mission is to act as a go-between on policy issues for the White House and the agencies, but eight officials tell the Post their primary task is to make sure agency staffers are carrying out the president’s agenda. Concerns about the president’s authority over the executive branch are not unusual, but no recent president has had such an arrangement.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/trump-aides-monitor-loyalty-of-cabinet-secretaries-report.html

How Soviet of him...