In February 2016,
Donald Trump the candidate
had no idea he was required by law to put a transition team in place to initiate preparations to run the federal government. Months later, after he had clinched the nomination, he still didn’t get that the people he’d begrudgingly allowed
Chris Christie to hire for the job had to be paid, and tried to shutter the whole operation because he thought transition workers were “stealing” his money. In November, after he had won the election, President-Elect Slow-on-the-Uptake fired everyone who’d been manning the transition team, threw their work in the trash, and decided, per
Michael Lewis, that he was going to handle things “more or less by himself,” a bone-chilling determination that he made right around the time it came out that he
thought Barack Obama’s West Wing staff came with the White House. In the
words of his own campaign chairman-turned-senior adviser, Trump didn’t “know anything,” and worse, he didn’t “give a shit.” And apparently, not much has changed since then, only now, he’s like, y‘know, the actual president.