Trump's blame game backfires: No one wants to work for his administration

Trump has failed to even name appointees for hundreds of critical positions in the government, but those who have been named are dropping out in frustration. The reason? Too many financial conflicts of interest and ethical guidelines to follow.

“This administration has nominated many more people with much more complex financial holdings that have problems than past administrations,” according to Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. And that makes the process of vetting nominees especially challenging.

This is what happens when a president tries to fill the government with his fellow billionaires and cronies, and it has led to “at least a dozen” potential nominees withdrawing their names from consideration.

This isn’t the only reason Trump is having a hard time finding people who are willing to work with him. In May, Politico reported that prospective hires were scared off by the ever-growing number of investigations into Trump’s inner circle, his campaign, and his administration.

And that was before investigations expanded to include his financial dealings with Russia, his obstruction of justice, his campaign’s clandestine meeting with Russian operatives — and a whole host of other scandals that have emerged in recent months.

On top of all the reasons why people might not want to work for an administration engulfed in scandal and criminal investigations, there’s also the matter of the boss’s temperament.

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to throw his own staff and closest advisers under the bus when it suits him. He frequently contradicts his own spokespeople, and he attacks and humiliates those who disagree with him.

In his devastating interview with the New York Times, Trump even went after one of his most loyal supporters, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

TRUMP: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else. […] I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president.

That Sessions was ethically obligated to recuse himself because he is also implicated in the investigations into the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russia is apparently lost on Trump. That Sessions has violated his own recusal apparently does not earn him points.

Sessions is supposed to be loyal to the rule of law, rather than the president, and is certainly not supposed to aid and abet the coverup and obstruction of an investigation. But to Trump, a man who understands absolutely nothing about the government he now heads, that is simply “unfair.”

No wonder people are reluctant to work for such a president — especially one whose administration grows more unpopular, and more mired in potentially criminal conspiracies, every day.