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President Trump has a pattern of giving people in his administration several big jobs at once. He did it during his first term, but now it is off the charts. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports on all of the Trump officials wearing more than one hat.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: When it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio's turn to speak during President Trump's recent marathon cabinet meeting, he joked about his employment status.
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MARCO RUBIO: For me, personally, this is the most meaningful Labor Day of my life as someone with four jobs. And so...
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KEITH: Rubio is currently serving as secretary of state, acting national security advisor and acting archivist of the United States. He recently handed off his fourth job, acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to another administration official who already had two other jobs himself.
ALEXANDER GRAY: I mean, honestly, all of these are more than full-time jobs.
KEITH: Alexander Gray was chief of staff for the National Security Council in the first Trump administration. He says Rubio is succeeding by prioritizing Trump's foreign policy instincts.
GRAY: If you don't have delusions of grandeur about what the job is supposed to do, if you don't think you're a policymaker, you can do the job very effectively even while doing other things.
KEITH: Rubio became acting national security advisor four months ago, and there's no indication that is changing anytime soon. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly tells NPR that having officials serve in multiple roles allows for greater communication and collaboration in the administration. The positive results speak for themselves, she added. Max Stier leads the Partnership for Public Service, which exists to promote best practices in government.
MAX STIER: This is no way to run anything and certainly not a way to run our government.
KEITH: So yeah, Stier is beside himself with all the Trump administration's double hatting. Using a basketball analogy, he says, this is like asking...
STIER: A single player to be able to play center and your point guard on your basketball team at the same time.
KEITH: The other cabinet official with as many jobs as Rubio is Russell Vought. He is Senate-confirmed as the director of the Office of Management and Budget and has been acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since February. Stier says, in that case, Vought's multiple hats makes sense.
STIER: He actively wants to dismantle it. That puts his hand on the tiller to make sure that he can run it into the rocks. It says a lot about what they think about our government.
KEITH: Vought also became acting director of USAID last week, with the express purpose of closing it down. There are now at least a dozen administration officials serving in two jobs or more. Trump is totally within the bounds of the law with these assignments, but his approach makes him an outlier among presidents. Alexander Gray, who served in the first term, says, this is just Trump's management style, honed over a lifetime of running The Trump Organization.
GRAY: And in a family business like the Trump organization, people wear multiple hats. First term, people wear multiple hats. Now it's turbocharged this time, but that's his comfort level, is you find people he's comfortable with, who he thinks do a great job, and you just keep giving them more responsibility.
KEITH: Case in point, Richard Grenell, Trump's special missions envoy who now also runs the Kennedy Center. Then there's the treasury secretary/acting IRS commissioner, the Health and Human Services deputy secretary temporarily in charge of the CDC, and the transportation secretary who now also leads NASA in his spare time. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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