title:  REPORT: Paranoid Trump Forces Cabinet Members To Only Hire People ‘Loyal’ To Him
text: Donald Trump is employing extra scrutiny to anyone his Cabinet hires to guarantee that they are loyal only to him.As he continues to whine about Democrats holding up the confirmation process for his nominees, Trump is frustrating his Cabinet members by forcing them to clear all new hires with former campaign staffers because he is paranoid that they may not be loyal to him. New hires are apparently being subjected to rigorous vetting, and if it is found that they ever criticized Trump in any way, they are dismissed.According to Politico,When an informal adviser to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently recommended a candidate for a high-level Senate-confirmed position at the agency, the adviser was told that the candidate had little chance of getting the job because the person had previously worked for an organization that was seen as being at odds with Trump s policy positions, one person familiar with the issue said.The same goes for the Treasury Department.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has clashed with White House officials over top officials in his department, sources say. The White House saw some of Mnuchin s picks as too liberal or not supportive enough of Trump, sources say.Even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has had to deal with Trump s paranoia.Several high-level people were delayed or scuttled because they didn t agree with Trump during the campaign or because the White House preferred someone else.Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has also felt Trump s wrath.At Housing and Urban Development, Shermichael Singleton, a top official, joined the department before being terminated when criticism of Trump surfaced in a final White House review.So Trump is literally firing anyone who criticizes him or has criticized him in the past, which means he isn t interested in diverse opinions or experience. He just wants a bunch of yes-men who agree with him no matter what, even if he is wrong.That s incredibly dangerous because Trump is in a job where dissenting opinions can be the difference between life and death, or war and peace. Even President Obama nominated Republicans to high-level positions and valued their input. The greatest presidents in history put together administrations that included some of their sharpest critics because they wanted differing opinions and perspectives that would help them make the best decisions. All Trump is doing is creating his own echo chamber.And because of Trump s obsession with total control and absolute loyalty, the various executive departments are very understaffed. Furthermore, Trump s insistence on scrutinizing every employee hired has apparently slowed down his own job to nominate people to positions as well. So far, he has only managed to pick less than 36 nominees to fill Senate-confirmed positions. There are over 550 such positions that need to be filled.Adding to Trump s problems is the fact that many potential hires are backing out of taking positions because they know associating themselves with Trump could ruin their reputations and careers, which is another reason why Trump is only seeking friends for positions. But Matt Sclapp, who worked for George W. Bush as his political director, correctly warned that only installing friends into government positions can seriously backfire. It often breaks down into trying to appoint your allies into jobs and that can lead to a lot of bad policy formulations,  he said.Indeed, while nominating some qualified friends is not a big deal, Trump is more interested in blind loyalty than he is in qualifications. Nominating only friends to important positions can lead to scandal, especially if those friends start using their positions to enrich themselves or give themselves government favors.Donald Trump s administration is a train wreck, and chaos and infighting reigns inside the White House as he continues to embarrass himself and the nation. Now, even his own Cabinet members are beginning to get frustrated with him, and one wonders who will be the first to resign because they have an incompetent paranoid asshole for a boss.Featured image by Mario Tama via Getty Images