Lobbyists Out, Human Beings In

After an opening stumble, he’s off to a good start:

The Trump transition team has lost nearly half its staff and volunteers in a matter of days since instituting a ban on registered lobbyists at the end of last week, the Daily Mail has learned. ‘All the lobbyists are gone,’ said one source familiar with the transition. ‘Lobbyists were the vast majority. Now, today you go in and you could count [them] maybe on one hand.’

Mike Pence, the head of the transition team, touted the lobbyist ban as a sign of Trump’s commitment to change

The source estimated that the number of staffers and volunteers working on the transition plummeted from around 250 late last week to less than 125 on Tuesday. The sudden purge of lobbyists has allowed conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to take a stronger role in the transition.

One lobbyist who was close to the transition team told the Daily Mail that ‘almost all of’ the lobbyists are gone from the team – although many are trying to influence as much as possible from the outside. ‘Everybody that’s still there has signed a letter saying they’ve deregistered and are okay with the five year ban,’ said the source. ‘It’s not like any transition I’ve ever seen before.’

Working in the capital has become exceedingly lucrative, and if you don’t believe me, check out the net worth of the Clintons and the Obamas, none of whom have ever worked an honest day’s work in their lifetimes, and yet are now multi-millionaires. Bottom-feeding lobbyists naturally gravitate toward the seat of power, so good for the Trump-Pence team for expelling them.

The mass exodus began late last week, after Trump officials asked transition workers to sign a form certifying that they were either not currently registered as lobbyists or foreign agents, or that they were in the process of terminating their lobbying registration. The form was due last Friday.

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington by cutting out special interests and lobbying groups from his administration. The departure of three high-profile lobbyists from the transition team — Michael Torrey, Michael Catanzaro and Mike McKenna — was reported last week.

The document verified that staffers were ‘not currently registered and reporting as a federal lobbyist…or as a compensated lobbyist at the state level in any state’ and were ‘not registered as an agent of a foreign principal.’

Washington, D.C., and its environs have been disgustingly rich off the tax money of real Americans, which accounts for the near-lockstep voting in favor of Democrats in the District, Maryland and Virginia. If Trump can even start to make a dent in this American version of The Hunger Games, he will have done his country a great service.