Former President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at Macomb Community College on Nov. 1, in Warren, Mich.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The election is over, and the complicated two-month sprint to hand over the levers of power from the Biden administration to the Trump administration is underway. But there are already signs that things are not on track.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has not yet signed official legal documents with the General Services Administration and White House — something that is supposed to happen by Oct. 1.
Under the Presidential Transition Act, both presidential campaigns get access to everything from government email accounts and office space to assistance with background checks and insight into the workings of government agencies — a running start to be ready to take the reins of power immediately after inauguration.
The agreements come with ethics requirements, including safeguards against conflicts of interest and fundraising limits.
Trump’s team has blown past the deadline to sign the agreements, saying they are still negotiating the terms.
Trump will still be sworn in on Jan. 20 regardless of whether his transition team takes up the GSA on its transition services.
But Max Stier, executive director of the Partnership for Public Service — a non-partisan group that has assisted campaigns in past transitions — told reporters on Friday that the new administration won’t “be ready to take over our government in a way that is safe for all of us” unless the agreements happen. “It is simply not possible,” he said.
“Even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done,” Stier said.
Transitions are a huge management challenge
There are some 4,000 political positions to fill in any new administration, approximately 1,200 of them requiring Senate confirmation.
That makes transitions a huge management challenge, said Clay Johnson, who led George W. Bush’s transition in 2000. That transition was delayed by the Florida recount.
“It was just so hard and unbelievable. People were crying and were losing sleep and so forth and so on,” said Johnson. “An incredible amount has to happen in a short period of time.”
During a transition, people are angling for jobs, working connections to get in. “The most important thing to pick the right people is to figure out what is the picture of success that you want to realize on behalf of the country,” said Johnson.
A campaign adviser said the jockeying for jobs in the second Trump administration has already been intense. Loyalty to Trump and a desire to disrupt Washington are top qualifications this time.
Trump’s transition team has downplayed the agreements
Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick has downplayed the importance of the documents.
“We’ll probably get them signed,” Lutnick said in an interview with CNN a week before the election. “These are not important issues. This is sort of a low-grade issue.”
Stier said he’s worried Trump is about to repeat the history of what is widely seen as one of the worst transitions of modern times: Trump’s last transition.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a press conference on Jan. 11, 2017 at Trump Tower in New York. After his 2016 victory, with cameras trained on the elevators in the lobby of Trump Tower, the president-elect put on a show, parading candidates for administration positions through.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
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TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
In 2016, Trump’s team signed versions of the same documents and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was charged with leading the transition, spent months crafting plans, vetting potential staff and working cooperatively with the outgoing Obama administration to make sure Trump would have what he needed on day one.
And then, two days after the election, Christie was fired by Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Not only was Christie out, but he said, so were all the plans.
“They had won a race that most people didn’t think they could win,” Christie told the Transition Lab podcast. “And now they thought, and now we’re going to run a transition in an unconventional way and watch everybody react to that.”
Trump’s first transition was chaotic
After his 2016 victory, with cameras trained on the elevators in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, the president-elect put on a show, parading candidates through. And while it made for decent television, it turns out it wasn’t the most successful way to staff an administration.
Trump picked a whole lot of people who just weren’t a good fit, like Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, and former Gen. James Mattis as Defense Secretary.
And because Trump’s team threw out months of planning, they were left with a lot of Obama holdovers in high-ranking acting positions when Trump took office.
Christie told the Transition Lab podcast that the Trump administration lost precious time to enact his agenda.
“You had people there who were hostile to the president personally and hostile to his agenda that he had just been elected on, and then he would wonder why he couldn’t get things done,” said Christie.
Lutkin, who is heading up the search for personnel, said the Trump team learned from those mistakes.
“We’ve got so many candidates, we are so set up,” Lutkin told CNN. “I feel great. And it’s completely different from what it was like in 2016.”
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