Face of Nation : WASHINGTON – On his first day in office, President Donald Trump formally nominated Andrew Puzder as his labor secretary, handing a key position in his administration to a fast-food magnate whom he’d boasted would save businesses from “the crushing burdens of unnecessary regulations.”
But Puzder couldn’t even save himself.
Puzder, who ridiculed his own restaurant employees as “the best of the worst” and said he’d like to replace them with robots, withdrew his nomination less than a month later amid devastating revelations he had once employed an undocumented housekeeper and failed to promptly pay taxes on her.
Puzder was one of the first, but not the last, of Trump’s nominees to fall. The pattern has been repeated again and again and again, with more than five dozen of Trump’s picks for various jobs either withdrawing or seeing their nominations pulled before they were put through the confirmation process in the Senate.
“We’re way over two years into this administration, and there are very large blocks of the government where you simply don’t have confirmed leadership,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that has been tracking the nominations process.
Sixty-one of Trump’s nominees have taken themselves out of consideration or saw their nominations pulled – nearly twice the casualty rate under Barack Obama, who had withdrawn just 32 nominations at the same point in his presidency, according to data collected by Stier’s group.
In Trump’s case, the number is actually higher. The Partnership for Public Service data includes only job candidates who were formally nominated. It doesn’t count nominees for federal judgeships or candidates who Trump said he intended to nominate but who took themselves out of the running before their official paperwork was sent to the Senate.
The chosen-but-not-formally-nominated dropouts include Herman Cain and Stephen Moore, who Trump announced last spring that he would appoint to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.
Both quit before Trump ever made their nominations official: Cain withdrew in April after his selection for a position overseeing the central bank touched off a considerable backlash among Democrats and some Republicans in Congress. Moore dropped out less than two weeks later following an uproar over his controversial writings about women and other issues.
Critics, including some Republicans in Congress, have openly suggested Trump’s high withdrawal rate is caused by the administration’s failure to properly vet the backgrounds of potential nominees.
Some blame the president himself. Trump has complained that the vetting process is “too ugly and too disgusting” and, at times, has chosen to follow his gut instincts instead of the counsel of his advisers – with occasionally disastrous results.
“The president who promised to ‘drain the swamp’ has chosen so many conflict-of-interest-ridden lackeys to run our nation’s government, precipitating a parade of ethics scandals, resignations and withdrawals,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Schumer said the Trump administration seems to have a two-part test for vetting nominees: “Views that are far out of the mainstream and a willingness to enable the president’s constantly changing positions no matter what.”
“This approach is failing the American people,” he said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Here’s a closer look at a dozen of Trump’s most high-profile nominees or picks who flamed out before they went through the confirmation process:
