Frankly, it was something we always expected. Many of these aides and employees were low-level individuals without a ton of experience and while a term under a sitting president is usually a major resume win, a term under Donald Trump just screwed them. However, according to a new report from The Washington Post, that Trump Rot is spreading farther and wider than low-level aides and affecting people with decades worth of experience.
The Post recently published a deep-dive article titled, “Corporate America isn’t welcoming former Trump Cabinet officials with open arms, headhunters say.”
The piece covered many a former Trump administration employee/official that wasn’t having much luck in the job industry these days. However, the most prominent, perhaps, to be detailed in the tell-all article was none other than Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao.
“Before she joined the Trump administration as transportation secretary, Elaine Chao earned millions of dollars over the past decade by serving on the boards of big public companies such as Dole Foods, Protective Life, and Wells Fargo, according to corporate filings,” the Post reported. “But now Chao is encountering a fraught reentry into the private sector.
Headhunters who have sought similarly prominent work for Chao have found little interest, according to two headhunters she’s consulted personally. The headhunters, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions, said top executives wary of backlash from associating with former Trump officials are boiling down Chao’s four-decade Washington résumé to its most recent entry: long-standing ally of Donald Trump, despite her resignation the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”
One of the headhunters told the publication that feedback from companies said “It’s too soon.”
Chao has declined to comment on the report but “a person close to her” claims she has already accepted new positions but they have yet to be finalized.
While Chao was the most stunning name included in the report, in our opinion, several other notable names from Donald Trump’s Cabinet appear to have been affected as well.
“While the small numbers make comparisons difficult, corporations don’t seem to have an immediate interest in other top Trump administration alums either. Roughly half of the S&P 500 companies have filed their 2021 investor disclosure reports, listing a total of 108 new or prospective board members, according to data from Insightia, which provides information to shareholders.
No Trump Cabinet officials who served in the final quarter of his term are among those nominated,” the report reads. “By this point in 2009, four major companies had lined up alums of George W. Bush’s Cabinet to serve as directors: global power company AES, oil and gas company Hess, chemical maker FMC, and United Technologies, the industrial conglomerate that has since merged with Raytheon.”
It seems that the Trump administration may actually be too toxic even for corporate America.
“Headhunters and other corporate advisers say the calculus for executives at most large, publicly-traded companies is simple. Trump — the only president to be impeached twice, the second time on a charge he incited the mob that assaulted the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the presidential election results — left office with a majority of Americans strongly disapproving of his job performance.
He remains a lightning rod for controversy and faces ongoing legal exposure from civil lawsuits and criminal investigations. Offering a board seat to anyone in his inner orbit risks inviting a revolt from customers, employees, or shareholders,” the report reads.