With less than a week to go in the Trump White House, staffers are reportedly frantically looking for their next gig. They’re not having a lot of luck.
After two months of the president challenging election results and last week’s attack on the Capitol, the cushy corporate and Hollywood jobs that usually await administration staffers after they leave the White House don’t seem to be there. One public relations recruiter who had more than a dozen staffers inquire about working with them said they took on six as clients but weren’t able to even land interviews for any of them, Business Insider reported.
“It’s just very hard,” the recruiter told Business Insider. “You’re supposed to put anyone in front of a job that has the credentials. Morally, it’s hard for people to want to work with them.”
Shockingly, it appears that people who voluntarily worked in the Trump White House have a sense of entitlement.
“They’re all very all about themselves with narcissistic attitudes, thinking any company in the country will want to hire me,” the recruiter told BI. “I listened to one for about 20 minutes, and it was so much baloney, what he was spewing out to me.”
Some White House staffers’ LinkedIn pages play up their ability to adapt to non-political roles. “Public relations professional experienced in crisis communications, strategic media engagement, and brand management” is how White House Deputy Director of Communications John Horstman describes himself.
“Extensive background in fast-paced and high-profile work environments. Leader with a successful track record of building effective teams, managing staff and producing measurable results.”
Alyssa Farah, the former White House communications director who resigned last month, is reportedly speaking with Hollywood agencies and is thinking about starting her own company, according to Business Insider. Her LinkedIn profile describes her as a “strategic communications professional with experience advising in the highest levels of government, with a focus on domestic policy, trade, national security and defense, and foreign policy.”
In a statement to VICE News, Farah said she was working in consulting and called the Business Insider story “false.”
“I left the administration back in early December to begin consulting work. Since then I’ve advised the Georgia senate run offs and a number of corporate and defense clients,” she told VICE News.
Until recently, White House staff’s troubles in finding a new job after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration was twofold. In the immediate wake of Biden’s victory, as Trump and much of the GOP continued to deny the results of the election, the White House personnel office reportedly let those in the administration know that if they were caught looking for a new job, they’d be fired.
According to a senior administration official, John McEntee, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, is spreading the word throughout the administration that if he hears of anyone looking for another job they will be fired.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 9, 2020
But the staffers’ difficulties in landing new jobs has spilled out into the open in recent days, particularly after pro-Trump extremists attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Public relations firm Burson Cohn and Wolfe (BCW), whose executives have included alumna from both the Clinton and Bush White Houses, told Business Insider that it has “no current plans to hire from this administration.”
And the day after the insurrection, Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane wrote in an op-ed that the outlet will treat companies who hire current and former Trump press secretaries such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sean Spicer, and Kayleigh McEnany, with the highest skepticism.
“Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie,” he wrote. “Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.”
Some of the more high-profile White House officials, it appears, are looking to land TV contributor gigs. Former chief of staff and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who resigned from his job as a special envoy to Northern Ireland following the attack on the Capitol, told Fox Business earlier this week that he’s looking for a job as either a television commentator or as an academic. And former national security advisor John Bolton is reportedly thought to be likely to return to Fox News, according to Business Insider.
It doesn’t seem that every network believes these people are redeemable, however.
“We’re not taking people who have no credibility,” one media executive told Business Insider bluntly. “Very few of them have real value beyond Fox News, [One America News], and Newsmax.”
Update 1/15/20 4:38 p.m.: This story has been include to include comment from Farah. The photo on this story has also been changed.
