The Trump transition team is smartly avoiding working with government

While former President Donald Trump continues campaigning for the 2024 presidential election , his transition team is showing signs that it learned from the pitfalls of the 2016 effort.

During an election year, the major party campaigns typically work with the General Services Administration on a transition plan so that whichever candidate wins the election is already in the process of preparing for the start of their administration.

But in 2016, the Trump transition's cooperation with the GSA proved to be one of the many hurdles to effective governance that his administration faced once it took power in January 2017. A recent Politico report said sources within Trump's team blame the agency's career staff for leaking the names of possible administration officials during the 2016 transition. There is also widespread anger at the fact that transition emails were handed over to former FBI Director Robert Mueller's investigation.

This time around, to avoid these problems, the Trump transition team is indicating it will eschew cooperation with GSA and instead go at the transition project alone, without the federal government's assistance.

There are multiple reasons why this is a good idea, and not simply because it will go a long way toward ensuring that GSA staff do not have the opportunity to leak the names of possible appointees.

Trump has staked his political reputation on his status as an outsider dating back to his first campaign in 2016. His mandate, should he win the election, will be to "drain the swamp" and fundamentally change the way the federal government operates. Refusing to work within the GSA's transition organization will send a strong message that his term in office will be much different than the first and that the staff of the federal bureaucracy will be treated with the suspicion that they deserve. Draining the swamp does not mean working with the swamp.

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Avoiding cooperation with GSA also empowers the Trump transition team to shield its donors and personnel from public view should the organization be set up as a nonprofit organization. While this may alarm transparency advocates, it is a necessary measure to ensure the effort will be well-funded and effective.

Of course, Trump still has to win the election, and any talk of a transition is somewhat premature. But at least for now, it appears his team is poised to avoid some of the problems that plagued the team four years ago.