The following article by Megan Trimble was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website December 28, 2017:
More than a third of President Donald Trump’s original White House staff have resigned, been fired or reassigned.
The Trump administration has featured one of the quickest revolving doors in recent presidential history.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House under President Donald Trump has seen an unprecedented 34 percent turnover rate in its first year. That number is the highest of any first-year departure rates in the last 40 years. It is also twice as high as in 1981, the next highest, when then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration saw a 17 percent turnover.
Per the Journal, 21 of the 61 senior officials tracked have either resigned, been fired or reassigned.
Not only is the percentage double, the seniority of people leaving is extraordinarily high,” Kathryn Dunn-Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has tracked White House departures, told the Wall Street Journal.
Dunn-Tenpas noted that administrations must navigate staffing missteps and growing pains in the first year, but in Trump’s case, “It’s a president with no experience in government and people around him who also had no experience,” she said.
The Trump team has been plagued by controversy and public criticism throughout each departure – most recently, with the exit of Omarosa Manigault Newman. Manigault Newman resigned her position as the director of communications for the White House Public Liaison Office earlier this month, with a departure planned for the end of January. Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, will also leave the White House early next year.
The resignations came on the heels of other notable departures from high level positions within the administration.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired after just 25 days on the job, and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was removed from his role as communications chief after 11 days on the job.
Other top aides, including former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Stephen Bannon have left the administration after rocky tenures on staff. And ousted FBI Director James Comey, White House press secretary Sean Spicer and members of the State Department also drew widespread attention during their high-profile firings and resignations.
View the post here.