In normal times, it would go to the top of anyone’s resume or resume. Serving the White House is usually a passport to a lucrative job on a corporate board, in the pressure industry, or in a prestigious Washington think tank.
But alumni of the Donald Trump administration could have a wake-up call. The outgoing president proved so disruptive and divisive that those who were perceived as his facilitators may find themselves with a cold shoulder while looking for an alternative job.
“These people will carry that stain with them for the rest of their lives,” he said Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. “The further we go from his tenure, the more historians, political scientists, political agents and history itself will discover, reveal and continue to prove how corrupt this was. And as long as this continues, the stain will only become darker and bigger.”
Presidential transitions can be brutal issues. Officials who have become accustomed to working in America’s most famous leadership, weighing on issues of economic and national security reverberating around the world, are suddenly expelled from the Washington cold after the inauguration of the new president elected on a gloomy January day.
But there is usually a support network, including the nearby K Street, the house of political pressure companies, and a lot of think tanks in the capital and beyond. Condoleezza Rice, a former secretary of state for President George W Bush, is now director of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California, which also gave safe harbor to Trump alumni Jim Mattis and HR McMaster.
White House press secretaries can thrive in the media or in the corporate world. Jay Carney, who was Barack Obama’s spokesman from 2011 to 2014, is Amazon’s senior vice president and head of public relations. His successor, Josh Earnest, who had a spell as an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, is now senior vice president and head of communications for United Airlines.
But Kayleigh McEnany, who currently holds the podium, may find it harder to do that job. She has been an unforgiving advocate of Trump’s manipulation of the coronavirus pandemic and false statements by election apparatus, as well as fierce criticism in the press. Oliver Darcy, a senior CNN media journalist, recently wondered, “Has McEnany ever provided the press with useful information in any of these alleged reports? It is difficult to remember the real news that was made known or offered at these events. “
McEnany may try to follow in the footsteps of Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, now host of the conservative TV channel Newsmax. He already appears regularly on Fox News and could formalize the deal. (Spicer’s successor, Sarah Sanders, published a memoir and is rumored to be planning a career as governor of his home state, Arkansas.)
But for others, the future is harder to discern. The daughter of President and senior adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, also a senior adviser, are said to be persona non grata in New York, where they may have hoped to resume their old lives. Alternatively, it was reported that Ivanka is considering running for a Senate seat in Florida.
Housing Secretary Ben Carson has told confidants he wants to start a thinktank, the Axios website reported. Carson “wants to create an organization that promotes Trump’s policies and encourages bipartisan dialogue,” a source in his circle told Axios.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser who pushed for Trump’s immigration policies and efforts to cancel the election, is unlikely to thrive in Washington, a staunch Democratic city of Joe Biden. The then Secretary of the Fatherland, Kirstjen Nielsen, was applauded, maddened and greeted with chants of “shame!” and “end family separation” at a Mexican restaurant in 2018.
Vela commented: “I don’t think there is any place in the United States or anywhere in the world that the most recognized and recognized can go back where they don’t find any appearance of resistance, at least for the foreseeable future.”
Expressing hostility to Miller on the part of many, Vela, an LGBTQ and Latin businessman and activist, added: human family “.
There are some possible shelters in Washington. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has hosted speeches by Trump officials and endorsers, and the Federalist Society, with a strong influence on the appointment of the president of more than 200 conservative judges, could look favorably on those who remained faithful to the bitter end.
But Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, who worked to defeat Trump’s electoral defeat, warned that his aides and accomplices will now be stigmatized everywhere. “It will be a very unique difference from the traditional idea that you worked at the White House and ended up having a fabulous set of jobs,” he said.
“It was always a commitment to enter any administration that obtained credentials and experience and an increase in professional career. This will probably have exactly the opposite result than anyone else expected. No one came out of it covered in glory. They came out with the appearance of beatings, corruption, humiliation and shame, so this is a very different scenario from any previous administration.
Wilson added, “No business board will say, ‘Wow, I need a person from the Trump administration on the board,’ unless it’s a MyPillow type. [Mike Lindell, an ardent Trump supporter]. I don’t really see it as the benefit to his career that has traditionally been perceived as “.
In the past, outgoing officials could fall back on a previous career. After serving in Bill Clinton’s White House from 1993 to 1997, Elaine Kamarck returned to academia by entering the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
“My assumption is that Donald Trump will create a kind of political organization, using all the money he has been raising to allege that the election was stolen and that this operation will employ some people,” he said. “I think kids will probably try to save the business empire again.
“Some of them may have political aspirations on their own, but I don’t see many of Trump’s next members becoming lobbies because Trump never had good relations with Congress and certainly not. I don’t see them joining groups. thought because there are no scholars among them ”.
Kamarck, a senior member in governance studies for the Brookings Institution’s thinktank in Washington, added, “Look, Donald Trump didn’t have a normal presidency, so he won’t be a normal post-presidency either.”