During the White House press briefing on Monday, right out of the gate -- as Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders prepared to introduce the White House's Director of legislative affairs, Marc Short, to the podium -- she referred to the obstruction by Senate democrats as "historic." She said that their press briefing would be over their effort to move President Trump's agenda forward over the confirmation of more of the President's cabinet nominees. President Trump previously tweeted about obstruction by Democrats and reportedly quickly "regretted" it.
Press briefing attempts to blame Democrats for 'historic' obstruction
Before Short took the podium, Sanders added that Senate Democrats were "conducting the slowest confirmation process in American history" and then went further to say that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's campaign of obstruction was unprecedented. In a separate statement, the White House said quite boldly that Democrats were obstructing the will of the American people.
Schumer's office also released a statement as the press briefing was coming to an end providing a list of nearly 30 of President Trump's nominations that that they received at Capitol Hill who did not have the proper paperwork. He also made a statement regarding those nominations on the Senate floor, also saying that it was unprecedented for an administration to be so slow in sending them nominees.
Trump White House already confirmed own effort to obstruct
As a confirmation of Senator Schumer's claim, the administration has made no secret of their intentions to purge the government of people they consider to be part of the "deep state" when they're not otherwise trying to disrupt the process of new hires. Further evidence of this was obvious during this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where President Trump's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon made it very clear that the reason they selected unqualified nominees was to deliberately "dismantle the administrative state."
At the same time, Democrats have been adamantly against many of President Trump's nominees as President Trump's picks have shown themselves to be quite incapable of leading their departments in the way their agencies are supposed to be run.
What many have seen in the first several months of the Trump presidency are the cabinet picks' efforts to cripple those government agencies using budget proposals that aim to strip those departments of their funding.
Self-sabotaging White House
Even Republican lawmakers have slammed cabinet members over their budget proposals, saying that the administration's attempts to slash billions in funding from those agencies was unprecedented.
If that were not enough to confirm the White House's deliberate attempts to keep from filling those government positions, its been reported that the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "went off" on a White House aide who had been turning down Tillerson's picks.
Overall, shifting the blame on Democrats is a hard sell given that according to the White House, the reason for not filling those positions comes down to the fact that President Trump requires new hires be loyal to him and to have never said anything bad about him in the past.