They were ordered to be on good behavior during the recent White House transition, but former Obama aides are now unplugged and whacking President Trump and his transition efforts.
“I can say whatever I want now,” said a speechwriter for former first lady Michelle Obama.
Sarah Hurwitz, now a Harvard University Institute of Politics resident fellow, let loose at a forum on public service this week that also featured former State Department Chief of Staff Jon Finer, also a resident fellow.
“This president is such a radical departure from any Democratic or Republican president in recent memory,” she said, adding, “and I think that was shocking, incredibly frightening, and incredibly jarring.”
Especially compared to the previous two presidents, she said. “I was just recently rereading President George W. Bush’s first Inaugural (address,) and I was just struck at how I felt like 90 percent of this could have come out of Barack Obama’s mouth. I felt like I pretty much agree with almost of all of what he’s saying here, it was such a beautiful articulation of core American values.”
Like Hurwitz, Finer said former Secretary of State John Kerry also told staff to help the Trump transition. But he said there wasn’t much to do.
“This was an unusual transition,” he said at the forum.
“We had prepared for several months, you know, a series of policy memos and meetings we wanted to have, kind of briefings we wanted to give the new team, everybody wanted to meet with their successor, you know, their new counterpart, and basically none of that happened. It was the decision of the other side that they didn’t want that level of interaction, they were going to do things their own way.
“So there was some discouragement, I think, among everybody that things that we thought were valuable, that we wanted to pass on, were not going to be passed on,” he said.
He added, “this is a different sort of transition, I think that is not a mystery to anybody here.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
