After conservative commentator Laura Ingraham on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for letting key posts go unfilled, President Donald Trump fired back on Twitter, claiming that those positions had been left vacant on purpose.
.@foxandfriends We are not looking to fill all of those positions. Don't need many of them – reduce size of government. @IngrahamAngle
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2017
During a segment on “Fox and Friends,” Ingraham said that the devastation of Hurricane Harvey in Texas shows how desperately Trump needs to fill open posts at agencies that help with disaster recovery.
“I think we can all look at these horrific pictures, and we can conclude a federal government does need staff. We see it acutely in need of staff in a situation like this,” she said after noting that the new FEMA director was just confirmed in June.
“We’re also facing a huge crisis with North Korea,” she continued. “We’re facing a crisis of confidence across the country where people wonder—even with President Trump in, he said he was going to drain the swamp—can we have a government that works for the people and not just have a people enslaved to the government?”
Trump often blames Democrats for obstructing the administration’s lagging efforts to fill key posts in the federal government. But as “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade noted on Tuesday morning, Trump has yet to even nominate people to fill a few hundred open positions.
Ingraham said that the White House should be scrutinized for the slow pace of nominations.
“This is a question that has to be posed to the administration. I know they have a lot on their hands, but we have to have people in place,” she said. “If there’s a plan to not staff and cause the ultimate shrinkage of government, then let’s hear about that as well.”
