Photo Credit: The Washington Post/ Getty

It’d be an understatement to say that Donald Trump isn’t exactly prepared for the task at hand. And we already know that he “didn’t want to jinx himself” with too much preparation pre-win. According to a source closely connected to the Trump transition team, though, the reality of the situation is worse than we might have feared. Apparently—as the Wall Street Journal has reported—Trump and his team really are just now learning what a president is even technically allowed to do.


Immediately after Tuesday’s election, members of Trump’s team were given the task of readying the president-elect for his transition to the White House. But in the hours-long meetings that followed, outside advisors tasked with helping the team were horrified to learn just how little the people getting ready to run the federal government actually knew.

“They are blatantly unprepared and don’t really have any sort of plan at all so far,” our source told us. “The best illustration is there were no prepared policy statements or papers. Whereas in 2012 Romney’s team had hundreds of pages worth of federal policy transitions planned and written out, Trump’s team had (as of Wednesday) literally no pages.


“Also his team’s grasp of federal powers is fairly paltry. They had hours long meetings with outside advisors to figure out what could and couldn’t be delegated to Pence, what the president could do unilaterally, etc. One of Trump’s advisors said as recently as last weekend that they were planning on what to do after the election with the assumption that Trump would lose, and had no real plan for a victory.”

Upon realizing just how little Trump and his team grasped about the presidency, the advisors assigned to help the transition effort were allegedly devastated: “A few of them can barely say Trump’s name without their voice cracking.”

And while many have wondered at Chris Christie’s sudden demotion from heading up the transition effort, that, too, was apparently just another symptom of the Trump team’s unpreparedness.

According to our source, Trump had just picked Christie as transition chair nominally, as everyone had assumed the New Jersey governor would never actually have to do any work. When Trump ended up winning, though, Trump and his team suddenly realized that, in fact, transition chair was a position that required a considerable amount of responsibility. And since the team is also allegedly looking at Christie as a potential attorney general—something at least some reports have called into serious question—Trump decided to stick Pence in the role instead.


There’s still quite a few more meetings to be had, and Trump has already been cutting corners to get the job done. So in the meantime, if you know anything at all about Trump’s transition efforts (or anything else you think the world should be aware of), please do let us know.