President-elect Donald Trump is already impressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill by making sure he and his aides are easy to reach.
According to Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, Trump and his team are signaling that the incoming administration is one that will want to make decisions fast. And that requires that the president-elect be able to rapidly get information from involved parties with limited bureaucratic hold ups.
For now, according to Corker, Trump is facilitating that easy transfer of information by continuing to answer his personal cell phone.
Corker told a crowd gathered at a recent breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor: “The president (elect), as you know, still answers his cell phone number. It’s an amazingly accessible group of people. It’s really beyond belief. Sunday, I needed to talk to the president about something. I called him on his cellphone, he answered and we talked. And by the way, my phone says no caller ID, so I’m not saying it has anything to do with me. Nobody knows who it is that’s calling when I’m calling.”
If Trump’s penchant for accessibility follows him to the Oval Office, it’ll be a departure from the closed door governing style of the Obama administration. Lawmakers, along with members of the military and intelligence communities, often complained of the difficulty of communicating with key members of the Obama administration throughout the current president’s eight-year tenure.
It is worth noting, however, that Trump probably won’t be picking up his personal cell phone much longer. As Hillary Clinton learned, using personal communications devices for government communication isn’t a very good idea.
Still, if Trump manages to govern with an open door policy, his administration will go down as one of the most productive in history.