This White House appears to be the polar opposite of the President Barack Obama administration. What do the former staff members think when they see the constant ripple of lies, the raging chaos, and one shakeup after another in the current administration? One Obama staffer stepped forward to talk about the Trump White House.
The turnover rate in the Trump administration is running at 40 percent. That’s double what other presidential administrations have had at this point in their terms.
The man currently sitting in the Oval Office tells the press that he likes chaos, to pit one person against another, then watch. Unfortunately, that has not been a very productive way to run the nation.
In addition, many people do not thrive in that sort of work environment. The employees tend to walk around on eggshells, ever in fear of losing their jobs, which tends to put them in constant survival mode.
Jay Carney was President Obama’s White House press secretary from January 2011 until May 2014. Obama’s former chief of staff, David Axelrod interviewed the one-time press secretary on The Axe Files podcast at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
Carney said he could not relate to the current White House and could not begin to imagine President Obama asking him to tell lies for the president. The former press secretary said:
‘It’s not a job I recognize. If your credibility starts to erode, the president’s credibility starts to erode, the administration’s credibility, the country’s credibility.’
Trump’s former press secretary, Sean Spicer, came onto the scene with one of the most memorable lies in the current administration, thus far. Spicer said on CNN:
‘We had a massive field of people. You saw that — packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I said wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out the field was, it looked like a million, a million and a half people, they showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period.’
https://youtu.be/csNk4vVVH8w
Counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway, went on NBC’s Meet The Press to defend Spicer and Trump on the crowd size. CNN reported that she said:
‘You’re saying it’s a falsehood. And they’re giving — Sean Spicer, our press secretary — gave alternative facts.’
The moderator, Chuck Todd was stunned:
‘Alternative facts aren’t facts, they are falsehoods.’
Todd continued to press Conway about why Trump sent Spicer out to lie:
‘What was the motive to have this ridiculous litigation of crowd size?’
Conway shot back:
‘Your job is not to call things ridiculous that are said by our press secretary and our president. That’s not your job.’
Back at the Axelrod interview, Carney said that people do come up to him and ask what he did when President Obama asked him to lie. The former press secretary said:
‘People ask me, “What did you do when your president asks you to say something wasn’t true?” I said it never happened. It’s inconceivable to me that it ever would have happened.’
Featured Image via Getty Images/Mark Wilson.
