President Donald Trump boasted late last month that his White House had executed "two perfect months' — but April has brought a series missteps.
The president highlighted fewer border crossings, higher military recruiting and a strong stock market, and his chief of staff Susie Wiles was credited with clamping down on infighting that had plagued his first administration. But mistakes and miscommunications have begun piling up, reported the New York Times.
"In recent weeks, the veneer of a more disciplined White House has begun to crack," the Times reported.
"The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, shared sensitive military information in not one, but two Signal group chats," the report added. "The I.R.S. has had three different leaders in the span of a single week. A Salvadoran man living in Maryland was deported because of an 'administrative error.' And, in yet another misstep, administration officials kicked off a war of threats with Harvard University by sending a letter to the school prematurely, two people familiar with the matter said."
Trump clashed in his first term with Washington veterans who checked some of his most radical ideas, but he's staffed his second administration with MAGA loyalists who lack experience and understanding of the agencies they're leading.
“There was a good reason to believe it would be more disciplined this time around,” said Hans C. Noel, a government professor at Georgetown University. “In order to filter out people who are on board with what he wants, that prioritizes loyalty and it prioritizes a certain set of ideological worldviews over competence."
Trump's re-election campaign was more disciplined than his first two runs for president, but Matthew Foster, government professor at American University, said running a political campaign was different from assembling a government.
“Campaigns are different than governing,” Foster said. “One thing you can say about the Trump administration is they are trying to fulfill their promises, right? They are trying to check all those boxes and do it in the way they argued, and we’re seeing that what’s a good campaign is not necessarily good administration.”