How Trump’s team is defying the norms of presidential transfers of power

As President-elect Trump prepares for a return to the White House, the aides and allies running his transition team have avoided many of the rules guiding the process. So far, the transition has not collaborated with the General Services Administration, the government agency tasked with handing power from one administration to the next. Laura Barrón-López discussed more with Max Stier.
Amna Nawaz:
As former President Donald Trump prepares for a return to the White House, the aides and allies running his transition team have avoided many of the rules guiding the process, choosing instead to cut out the government his administration will take over in January.
Our Laura Barron-Lopez is back now with a deeper look at the delays in the transition process.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Amna, so far, the president-elect’s transition team has not collaborated with the General Services Administration. That’s the government agency tasked with handing power from one administration to the next.
They have also cut out other government agencies and they have declined to have the FBI run background checks on appointees, instead relying on private services. The choices are a warning sign for many federal workers.
Joining me to discuss is Max Stier. He’s president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service and an expert on presidential transitions.
Max, thank you so much for joining.
Max Stier, President and CEO, Partnership for Public Service: Thank you for having me here.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Some may think that Donald Trump has been president before, he knows what he’s doing, he can do it again, but why exactly is the lack of communication and coordination with existing agencies a big deal?
Max Stier:
So there are two answers to your question.
The first is, in the near term, the failure to engage with the government agencies that you just mentioned, including the White House, will mean that the Trump team will not be ready on day one, January 20, when they’re responsible for running our government. They will not be ready to govern in a way that can keep us safe and that can actually achieve the promises that have been made on the campaign trail.
To run our government is a huge endeavor. You have to do a lot of preparation. You noted that president-elect Trump was president previously. That was a while ago. It’s a team sport, and the rest of his leadership team was not part of that administration. They need to do a lot of prep work to be ready, and they need to engage with the agencies to actually be ready on day one.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
So far, the president-elect has named roughly 15 of the 25 Cabinet-level positions. So it doesn’t seem as though he’s being slowed down by the fact that they are not signing those ethics pledges.
What exactly is the public missing here, and how could this delay the way government functions?
Max Stier:
Sure.
So announcing who president-elect Trump would like to have lead the agencies is not something that requires engagement with federal agencies, other than after the fact he was going to need to make sure that they have the background checks that you mentioned from the FBI. They’re going to need to go through the Office of Government Ethics to make sure their financial conflicts are cleared.
The Senate has a responsibility to check with their advice-and-consent responsibility all the appointments that require their review. The fact that he’s moving very quickly in terms of naming people that he would like to serve in his Cabinet or in senior leadership positions does not mean that he’s working very effectively.
So we have already had one proposed nominee drop out. We have questions about the vetting that might have been done or not been done for others. So going fast and not doing it well doesn’t actually move you forward in a very smart way.
So, understanding the situation within each agency, what the big issues are, what the challenges are, what the problems are that they’re going to have to resolve, that’s all fundamental work that’s part of the preparation. You need to get access to the agencies to be able to do that.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
People who are going to be entering the Trump administration, people like Vivek Ramaswamy, have said that agencies need to be — quote — deleted outright.”
Other Trump allies have described the incoming administration as — quote — “a hostile takeover.” Does this have any impact on the transition itself? What do you see as the larger impact of this kind of hostile takeover, as they describe it?
Max Stier:
Right.
So, again, I think there should be no hostility. The federal government is there in order to serve the duly elected new leaders. We have a democracy. The civil servants who are there, the career professionals who are apolitical, are used to new political teams coming in, changing the directions that they want to go. If you win an election, you have that right.
What you don’t have the right to do is break the law or break the Constitution. So, even the very concept of a hostile takeover is going to lead to less effective government and get in the way of their ability to achieve the agenda that they have set out.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Max, you said that on day one Trump’s transition team may not be ready to take over government.
Max Stier:
Yes.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Does that have an impact on people’s everyday lives at all?
Max Stier:
So it will have an impact on people’s everyday life.
It will, even more importantly, have an impact on the threat that we all may face from a national security problem. So the handoff of power is the point of maximum vulnerability for us as a nation. We have seen historically, whether it was 9/11 or in 2008 a threat during the inauguration, there are real issues that come up during the transition that involve our actual safety.
So you do want to make sure that the new team coming in is ready to take that handoff and has all the information they need, all the time to prepare to be actually ready. On the day-to-day life, that stuff will show up later on down the road. It may not be obvious, but there will be impacts on everything from food safety to air traffic safety.
The list is very long of things that we rely on for our federal government. And if you don’t have a team that knows how to run the government effectively, you will see a degradation of service over time and you might see, again, big risks of things not working at all.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Max Stier, thank you for your time.
Max Stier:
Thank you very much.