The media, and even people here at DKos, are in the habit of referring to a Trump “administration.” They, and we, need to understand that no such thing exists.
There is only Trump the grifter and a small, and (thankfully) incompetent, propaganda office.
Everything else is old shoe laces and duct tape, bubble gum and ratty cardboard, all loosely cobbled together and coated in a slap-dash layer of ticky-tacky gold spray paint intended only to present the illusory facade of an administration. It has all the structure and stability of a sofa-cushion fort.
Five months into his run as Grifter in Chief, Trump has yet to fill 90% of the positions needed to run the executive branch. Of some 1,100 jobs requiring Senate confirmation to fill, he has filled only 111 of them. Of even those, 41 of his named picks have yet to receive Senate approval. In addition, there are roughly 4,000 other jobs to fill and he has filled only a tiny fraction of them.
The reason for this is two-fold: First, his base and money men don’t actually want a government to exist. The rubes want to tear it all down as live as “free men!” (Yarrr, matey!). The money men want a world in which they are the absolute rulers, in command by dint of their vast wealth and arrogance. They want a weak, all but nonexistent government, fully under their thumb, that functions solely to foster their own wealth and power, unhindered by childish and outmoded concepts like democracy and freedom.
Secondarily, and perhaps more to the point, there is no Trump administration because Trump doesn’t want one, or even understand that he needs one. He is a grifter, nothing more. He sees the Presidency as his chance to skim hundreds of millions in tax dollars out of the public till, glean millions more in “political donations” from his adoring fans (money which will end up in his own pockets and never get spent on his never gonna happen 2020 campaign), and solicit billions in purchases of “services” from his Trump companies, which are no more nor less than tacitly “legal” bribes paid by those wanting to purchase favors and score influence with Trump. The Constitution calls these “emoluments” and absolutely forbids them. The GOP-controlled Senate looks at them and yawns (or covets similar emoluments for themselves).
Rumblings have been quietly reported among Trump’s Cabinet officials and within their departments, complaints that they cannot do the work the President claims he wants done (all those unfulfilled campaign promises) with only skeleton staffs and no direction from the top. Recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — a typically laconic man who holds his position only as a way to ensure his (nominally) former company, Exxon, gets access to half a trillion dollars in Russian oil money (as long as Trump gets his taste, of course) — exploded in a meeting with White House staffers, complaining (screaming) that the Trump White House personnel office is hamstringing his attempts to staff the State Department through micro-management and foot-dragging. (White House dogsbody and boy of all work, Jared Kushnerr, unprofessionally compounded this event by whining, afterwards, that Tillerson’s epic rant was “unprofessional” — always a good idea to let the boss’s effete son-in-law insult the staff where the other staff can overhear. Yet another example of the fecklessness and incompetence of the Trump White House team and another reason why they have not yet formed an administration — nobody competent wants to work for them.)
Staffers within the executive branch, many of whom have worked for years in various capacities across the government, and are doing the day-to-day grunt work of the government, are barely doing their jobs due to lack of management direction (due to a lack of management at all) and a desire to not have their fingerprints on what little actually does get done, anticipating a Trump flame out and subsequent house cleaning.
Trump’s laser-like focus on his own personal enrichment and his desperate need to continually be under the adoring gaze of his sycophantic followers has crippled his Presidency in every way that matters to the American people. His inability to even begin to comprehend the responsibilities of his job and his innate laziness make it unlikely that this deficit will ever be resolved within his term in office.
As it stands now, the United States is without a functioning President and without an executive branch administration at all. How long can this situation last without doing lasting harm to the United States? And is there anyone out there who cares?