Hey, remember that Team Trump ethics pledge? There is no Team Trump ethics pledge. Because the first time it inconveniences someone, it gets festively defenestrated.
Senior White House budget adviser Marcus Peacock is leaving President Donald Trump’s administration to become the second in command at a high-profile business lobby group in Washington that’s looking to increase its influence.
This is just a petty side note, but Donald Trump having an adviser named Mr. Peacock is one of those things that just sounds right the moment you hear it. Of course he does. He also is advised by Mr. Goldleaf, Mr. PoorAngerManagementPractices, and Mr. NarcissisticRatingsObsession.
Mr. Peacock will be moving from the Office of Management and Budget to lobbying that same office as part of the Business Roundtable, a group comprised of 200 or so corporate heads advocating for corporate things. Lobbying the very office you just moved out of would obviously be unethical even according to Donald Trump’s own team, so he's being granted a waiver from Trump to—you guessed it—do it anyway.
Peacock will recuse himself from lobbying OMB for six months, the roundtable said. When he joined the Trump administration, Peacock signed an ethics pledge required by the president that would’ve banned him from lobbying his former office for five years. The White House granted him a waiver from that commitment, the roundtable said.
To be fair, the administration is only two months old—he hardly had time to put his things in order before he bolted for the door again. Holding someone like that to a strict ethical standard would seem terribly mean.