Biden Admin Dealt Another Brutal Blow as Senior Adviser Leaves Post, Departs DC Entirely
Joe Biden’s dumpster-fire presidency is being roiled by alarming instability at the senior-executive staff level, with Keisha Lance Bottoms — the head of the Office of Public Engagement — becoming the latest official to jump ship.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that Stephen Benjamin, the former mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, will replace Bottoms, who resigned after just eight months on the job.
“I have leaned on Keisha as a close advisor with exceptional instincts, and I am grateful to her for serving our nation with honor and integrity,” Biden said in a statement. “I wish her the best as she returns home to Atlanta to be with her family.”
Bottoms — a former one-term mayor of Atlanta — does not have a job lined up, raising questions about why so many senior executives have quit the foundering administration during the first two years of Biden’s presidency.
In keeping with his toxic prioritization of race over color-blind qualifications, Biden has replaced a black woman with a black man as the director of the Office of Public Engagement.
The White House news release described the office’s mission as working “at the local, state, and national levels to ensure community leaders, diverse perspectives, and new voices have the opportunity to inform the work of the President in an inclusive, transparent and responsible way.”
Notably, however, the 80-year-old Democrat has lost a significant number of minority staffers since taking office in 2021 — a stinging rebuke of his affirmative-action hiring decisions.
The trend was so blatant that Politico coined the term “Blaxit” (a portmanteau of “black” and “exit”) to describe the exodus of more than 21 black staffers during Biden’s first year alone.
“Blaxit.” https://t.co/ya6mVSY515
— Michael Kruse (@michaelkruse) May 31, 2022
An unidentified official suggested that a dysfunctional and chaotic atmosphere was a key driver of the mass resignations.
“They gave us a mandate to execute on all the things that we promised, and not only are we not delivering on that front, but then we’re not also delivering to the staff that came in on the basis of that promise,” the official told Politico in May 2022.
“People go home to their families or their communities, and what can they point to specifically? They can’t even point to their own experiences as positive.”
With the latest resignation, 29 senior-level executives (out of 66) have dumped the Biden administration as of Tuesday, making the turnover rate an alarming 44 percent, according to tracking data compiled by the Brookings Institution.
None of Biden‘s Cabinet officials has resigned yet, but the turnover among the president’s “A-Team,” as defined by Brookings, is troubling.
The volatility in the White House mirrors the instability festering nationwide amid skyrocketing inflation, surging crime, daily border invasions and an erratic geopolitical landscape that’s pushing the U.S. toward World War III.
Now more than ever, the United States needs an “America First” president who will prioritize the safety and well-being of its citizens instead of sowing racial division and fomenting economic collapse.
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