In normal times, it would appear at the top of someone’s curriculum vitae or resume. Serving in the White House was usually a passport to a lucrative job on a board, in the lobbying industry, or at a prestigious Washington think tank.
But alumni of the Donald Trump administration may face a rude awakening. The outgoing president turned out to be so disruptive and divisive that those considered his enablers could get the cold shoulder looking for other work.
“Those people will carry this 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 get away from his tenure, the more historians, political scientists, politicians and just history itself will discover, reveal and continue to demonstrate how corrupt this was. And as that continues, the stain will only get darker and bigger. “
Presidential transitions can be cruel business. Officials who have become accustomed to working at America’s most famous address, dealing with economic and national security issues reverberating around the world, are suddenly thrown into the cold of Washington following the inauguration of the newly elected president on a gloomy January day .
But there is usually a support network, including nearby K Street, home to political lobbying firms and a range of think tanks in the capital and beyond. Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, is now director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which also provided a safe haven for Trump alumni Jim Mattis and HR McMaster.
The White House press secretaries can thrive in the media or in business. Jay Carney, who served as Barack Obama’s spokesman from 2011 to 2014, is a senior vice president and chief of public relations for Amazon. His successor, Josh Earnest, who spent a period as an analyst at NBC News and MSNBC, is now senior vice president and chief communication officer at United Airlines.
But Kayleigh McEnany, who is currently on stage, may find such work more difficult. She was an unabashed defender of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and false election fraud claims, as well as being a fierce press critic. Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter at CNN, recently wondered, “ Did McEnany ever provide the press with any useful information at any of these alleged briefings? It’s hard to remember real news that was broken or offered during these events. “
McEnany could try to follow in the footsteps of Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, now a presenter on the conservative TV channel Newsmax. She already appears regularly on Fox News and could formalize the arrangement. (Spicer’s successor, Sarah Sanders, published a memoir and is rumored to be planning a run for governor of her home state, Arkansas.)
But for others, the future is more difficult to discern. The president’s daughter 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 life. As an alternative, Ivanka is reportedly considering running for a Senate seat in Florida.
Ben Carson, the housing secretary, has told confidants he wants to start a think tank, the Axios website reported. Carson “wants to start an organization that will promote Trump’s policies and promote two-pronged dialogue,” a source in his inner circle told Axios.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser who has pushed Trump’s harsh immigration policies and efforts to reverse the election, is unlikely to thrive in Joe Biden’s Washington, an unshakable Democratic city. The then Secretary of State, Kirstjen Nielsen, was booed, satirized and greeted with chants of “shame!” and “end of family divorce” in a Mexican restaurant in 2018.
Vela noted, “I don’t think there will be anywhere in the United States or anywhere in the world that the more high-profile, recognizable people will ever be able to go again where they can’t with any semblance of resistance, at least for the foreseeable future.”
Vela, an entrepreneur and LGBTQ and Latino activist, voiced the animosity toward Miller that many feel, adding, “ Honestly, he’s so mean that unless he’s rehabilitating or in a redeeming situation, I’ll make the contribution he makes to the human family. “
There are some possible retreats in Washington. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has delivered speeches by Trump officials and supporters, and the Federalist Society, which was hugely influential in the president’s appointment of more than 200 Conservative judges, could be supportive of those who stayed true to the bitter end.
But Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, which worked to secure Trump’s election defeat, warned that his aides and accomplices will now be widely stigmatized. “It will be a very unique difference from the traditional idea that you worked in the White House and that you had a fantastic array of jobs ahead of you,” he said.
“It was always a tradeoff to work at an administration that would give you references and experience and that your career would rise. This will likely have the exact opposite result than anyone else expected. No one got out of here covered in glory. They came out looking beaten and corrupt, humiliated and ashamed, so this is a very different scenario from any previous government. “
Wilson added, “No board will say, ‘Oh, hey, I need a Trump administrator on the board’ unless it’s MyPillow guy [Mike Lindell, an ardent Trump supporter]. I really don’t see it as the benefit to anyone’s career that it’s traditionally seen. “
In the past, outgoing civil servants may have been able to revert to an earlier career. After serving in Bill Clinton’s White House from 1993 to 1997, Elaine Kamarck returned to academia by joining the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
“I suspect that Donald Trump will create some kind of political organization, using all the money he raised by claiming that the election was stolen, and that that operation will employ some of the people,” she said. “I think the kids will probably try to save the business empire again.
“Some of them may have political ambitions themselves, but I don’t see many of the nearby Trump people becoming lobbyists because Trump has never had good relations with Congress and they certainly don’t. I don’t see them going into think tanks because there are no scholars among them. “
Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, added, “Look, Donald Trump didn’t have a normal presidency, so it’s not going to be a normal post-presidency either.”