By The Associated Press – U.S. President Donald Trump is using the power of the presidency to punish his Cabinet members.
The president, who has shown no signs of relaxing his demands for legislative fixes, is ordering Cabinet members to keep their mouths shut and ignore the daily media blitz.
“I’m going to make sure they’re not tweeting or talking or anything else to you.
If you don’t do that, I’m going do that,” Trump said on the South Lawn at the White House on Thursday.
Trump’s decision to impose such a measure is part of a new strategy to control his fractious Cabinet.
He has made the first move to reshape his administration since he took office.
“If I get a good Cabinet, I’ll be very, very satisfied,” he said.
“I can say with absolute certainty that I will not be appointing a Cabinet member.”
The president has been under increasing pressure to find new and more productive ways to move through Congress to enact major legislative achievements.
Trump has also been frustrated by the lack of a legislative agenda, a legacy that is likely to linger into the future.
In the months before he took over the Oval Office, the president had made more than 100 appointments to key Cabinet positions, and he said he would seek to fill vacancies in the White Senate, the National Economic Council and the Federal Reserve.
Trump made a series of appointments to the Federal Communications Commission during his presidency, and in February he also announced he was nominating Brett Kavanaugh, a Supreme Court nominee, to the full bench of the Court.
But as he seeks to move ahead with his agenda, Trump has been hamstrung by his inability to move forward with a budget, a key item in Congress.
Trump, who said during the campaign that he would make a budget for the U.s., has also repeatedly asked Congress to give him a $1 trillion stimulus package.
Trump said he was considering “a couple” of ideas for how to make the money for a stimulus package that has yet to be approved by Congress.