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there is simply no Trump Administration at State. The appointments haven't been made or, if made, have yet to be confirmed.

From the article linked at post #44 of this thread:

"Trump and Tillerson have yet to nominate candidates to fill more than 83 senior-level positions and ambassadorships, and that's only a partial count. At the level of assistant secretary – the folks who actually manage day-to-day diplomacy – out of 22 positions, only two people have been nominated, and one confirmed. Empty offices include assistant secretaries for Near Eastern affairs, South Asian affairs, European and Eurasian affairs, Western Hemisphere affairs, East Asian and Pacific affairs, African affairs, political-military affairs, arms control, population, migration and refugees, democracy, human rights, labor and many more.

"One gap is especially ironic. Despite Trump's pre-election harping on the deaths in Libya in 2012, when a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi was attacked and the American ambassador killed, there's no assistant secretary for diplomatic security yet."

Exactly. I don't know what the holdup is, but if the Trump Team can't even bother to send up nominations, no one should be surprised if policy is adrift. At least send up the nominations so we can grouse about Schumer and the Democrats blocking them, or McConnell and the Republicans being slow in forcing them through. But the desks are empty. An overactive tweet account and Jared with a superman cape can't compensate for a failure to staff the administration.

Surely someone senior in the White House understands this is a problem? Surely? I see an occasional comment from someone burrowed deep in presidential personnel that they are hard at work, but I don't see nominees being sent forward. And I see the top people being utterly consumed with p***ing matches on social media and spats with the press.

The Democrats, of course, are perfectly happy with this. The budget process being what it is, Trump has already lost his first year. If he's not careful, he'll lose his second. I'm not close enough to the process to have a sense of what is going on, but I wonder if someone or some group in the Trump camp is so interested in making sure "establishment" Republicans are excluded that they've preemptively eliminated most of the veterans of prior administrations and the Hill who could step in seamlessly and who would know what they're doing.

I also wonder if a lot of good people are hesitant to give up good jobs and take a cut in pay to join an administration that can't seem to get its act together.

Fill the seats, already.