Anecdotes from Michael Lewis

I got to see my boy Michael Lewis last night at City Arts and Lectures. He's to me what Michelle Obama is to young girls, so I was a big fanboy. My favorite two anecdotes:

- Outgoing Presidents are legally obligated to put together a transition team to train the incoming administration on details of how to run the government. Obama had 1000 people spend 6 months preparing what was essentially a course on how to run each department of the federal government. Trump had 200 people on his transition team that were supposed to show up and learn from them. They had their presentations ready, parking spots outside the building reserved, finger foods ready, and no one showed up. Trump fired all of them the day after the election and to this day no one has read those briefs. When Michael Lewis called someone at the department of agriculture to ask about it, he said “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been wanting to show someone the presentation we made.”

- Irony at its finest. When Rick Perry was running for president he famously forgot the name of the third department of the government that he would eliminate. That was the department of energy. Today, Rick Perry is head of the department of energy. Doesn’t sound too concerning except for the fact that the Dept of Energy controls our nuclear arsenal too.