The president has faced an array of roadblocks in his efforts to get his overall agenda turned into reality, including the fact that he can barely keep a stable staff. Rather than surrounding himself with experts ready to work for significant, long periods of time on policy proposals, the president has seen numerous officials walk out the door during his comparatively short time in office. He’s pushed many of them out himself.
White House infrastructure adviser DJ Gribbin is departing, per @JenniferJJacobs. By my count, he is the 67th Trump White House aide to announce plans to leave. Here is the full Wake Up To Politics list of Trump Administration departures: https://t.co/VPIMiXwGEP
— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) April 3, 2018
The latest administration official to have their imminent departure reported is Trump infrastructure policy adviser DJ Gribbin, who joined up with the administration early last year. White House reporter for Bloomberg News Jennifer Jacobs stated late Tuesday afternoon that no date for his departure has yet been set.
Gribbin is one of a cast of characters to have their departures from the White House reported in recent weeks and months; others to be shown the door recently include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House communications director Hope Hicks, and the president’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.
McMaster is being replaced by someone who is not at all reassuring; John Bolton — who has voiced support for preemptive strikes on both Iran and North Korea — will be taking over.
As for Gribbin, he’s leaving the White House in the face of the president’s infrastructure plan continuing to fail to get off the ground.
The plan that the president has unveiled is questionable in the minds of many to say the least; his administration wants state and local governments to foot most of the bill of the plan, which totals some $1.5 trillion. According to the White House’s idea, the federal government would only put forward a total of about $200 billion, with half of that in the form of matching funds for undertakings by lower level governmental bodies.
As for where exactly that money would come from, it’s hardly certain; the White House has repeatedly called for massive cuts to government programs and agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the State Department. The White House’s proposals have unsurprisingly repeatedly stalled in Congress; it’s not as though any large bloc of Congresspeople are excited about the possibility of being known for slashing massive chunks from the budgets of key programs to the point of killing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Besides the monetary aspects to the plan, the proposal is yet another instance of the presidential administration seeking to rollback environmental protection regulations; projects covered by the plan would have their approval time shortened to two years.
The plan is hardly the only Trump administration policy push to fail in recent months; the only real major policy success has been the tax reform package that the president signed into law late last year. A host of other projects like an ObamaCare repeal plan have fallen by the wayside.
Throughout the just over a year of his presidency, the commander-in-chief has carried on with bizarre antics, such as the occasion when he displayed a massive chart meant to cast the regulatory process that must be waded through in building a highway as overly burdensome. The soon-to-be-departed Gribbin was a part of that event.
Featured Image via Chris Kleponis/Pool via Bloomberg
