King of the swamp

One of the defining characteristics of the Trump campaign was its love of summarising policies into three word chants.  "Build the wall" was an early favourite.  Then there was "lock her up", shouted by many Trump supporters (including Trump adviser Michael Flynn, who has since plead guilty to lying to federal investigators and might be having some jail time of his own to think about the irony of it all).

But the biggest and most popular was "drain the swamp", encompassing how this political outsider was going to come in to Washington and fix the broken political system.  So, how's it going?

Well, initial signs were not good.  He gave senior White House Adviser roles to his daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner.  Ivanka has sat at the table with world leaders at the G20 summit, whilst Jared is supposed to have lead responsibility for several high level policy areas including the Middle East.  This is despite neither of them having anywhere near sufficient experience, qualifications or knowledge in the areas they are involved with.  It's almost as if were they not directly related to the President, they may never have got these roles at all.

As well as the lack of qualifications, there's another reason nepotism like this can cause problems.  Here's Ivanka refusing to answer questions about sexual assault accusations against the President - "I think that's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter".  Well, OK, but it's a perfectly fair question to ask of a White House Adviser who's job it is to represent the President.  The swapping of hats from family member to adviser to avoid questions you don't like is why nepotism laws exist.

Then there are the President's business interests.  Since Watergate, all Presidents have got rid of their business interests and for transparency, published their tax returns.  Trump has done neither.

This week, Jared Kushner has his security clearance downgraded.  There have been calls for this for some time - he made repeated errors in his security clearance application, declining to mention several meetings he'd had with foreign officials.  Since the start of Trump's Presidency, Kushner has had only interim security clearance whilst the FBI continue to do their background checks on him.  Despite only having interim status, he's still been viewing top secret briefings in the White House (which is curious when you think that Trump made Hilary Clinton's handling of classified information a pretty big deal during the election).  Chief of Staff, John Kelly, has downgraded the clearance of Kushner and others with interim clearance until the FBI conclude their background checks. 

Normally, this would mean an adviser at Kushner's level would no longer be able to do his job without sufficient security clearance.  However, this would ignore the facts that a) he's Trump's son in law, and b) he couldn't do the job anyway.  So expect him to continue to hang around the White House. And why wouldn't you want to hang around if you were him?  Recent reports show his businesses received significant loans after he met with business contacts in the White House, supposedly on official business.  This is not the first time Trump's family have used their status as advisers to the President to leverage support for their private businesses. 

There are many more accusations of the White House using their official status to pursue private gain.  After claims to drain the swamp, Trump's administration is set to be the swampiest (it's a word) on record.  And with so many swamp records set in the first year, who knows, or dares to dream, what the Trump family will come up with next?