Former North Dakota Governor and now-Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is a bitchy, abusive diva to top political appointees at the department, forcing them to freshly bake chocolate chip cookies and even having them serve as waiters during a multicourse meal, the Atlantic reports.
"Burgum has also used the political appointees in his department for another purpose in recent days: stacking firewood in his office's fireplace. At times, he has instructed his staff on the finer points of arranging logs so they won't collapse and create noise when burning during meetings," the Atlantic writes about the apparent tyrannical abuses meted out on administrative professionals, something that department staffers admit happened but tried to soften it by saying that "was not intended imperiously." The sources mentioned that because Burgum worked as a chimney sweep in college he was just trying to be helpful with tips on how to properly maintain a fire, lol.
In another similar "pushback" the sources playing defense tell the Atlantic that Burgum requires all the labels be removed from bottles of water just in case they appear in social media photos to avoid making it look like he's endorsing one brand of water over another, as if the Trump Administration is known for being so meticulous with ethical issues. This is a dozen or so paragraphs down from the part detailing how Burgum ordered a National Park Service police helicopter to take him to Andrews Air Force base so he could fly with the convicted felon president down to Florida, for which Burgum ordered the pilots to turn off the GPS transponder so the flight couldn't be tracked. This was just over a week after the collision between a US Army Blackhawk and an American Eagle flight approaching DCA that killed 67 people and while Senator Ted Cruz was pushing for all federal aircraft over the DC area to keep their transponders on at all times to avoid a repeat.