Exclusive—Papa John’s Founder John Schnatter: Like a Boss — How Trump Is Transforming the Presidency by Leading Like a CEO
Politicians love to talk about running the government “like a business,” but President Donald Trump is arguably the only person who has ever approached the presidency with a true CEO mentality.
Drawing on his decades of business experience, Trump clearly recognizes that his job right now is very similar to that of a CEO brought in to engineer a corporate turnaround. Virtually across the board, the entire apparatus of the federal government is in desperate need of an overhaul. Waste, fraud, and weaponization of the justice system are so endemic that entire books could be — and regularly are — dedicated to cataloging the most obnoxious examples.
Trump and his team have set ambitious goals for addressing government bloat, pledging to slash budgets and shrink the federal workforce by 10 percent or more. At the same time, they’re working to pass monumental legislation to extend the Trump tax cuts and secure the border.
As someone who has orchestrated numerous turnarounds, I believe President Trump will succeed.
Unlike previous presidents, many of whom have promised transformational change only to settle for softening some of the rough edges of the status quo, Trump has made clear that almost everything is on the table. Institutional inertia used to be the most powerful force in Washington. Now Trump, with his hard-won institutional knowledge, is the most powerful force in Washington, and his team is taking direct aim at the sacred cows of the Beltway establishment.
Whereas previous presidents significantly increased funding for USAID and other foreign aid initiatives, for instance, Trump didn’t hesitate to put the entire agency on hold while his administration went through its expenditures with a fine-toothed comb to eliminate programs that waste U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote left-wing ideological objectives rather than helping to feed or clothe the world’s poor.
Similarly, although Republicans have been pledging to shut down the Department of Education since the era of Ronald Reagan, none have had the political courage to do so until now. Trump, laser-focused on his mission to eliminate wasteful and ineffective spending, declared that he wants his nominee for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, to “put herself out of a job” by overseeing the dismantlement of the entire Department.
These are the actions of a president who knows that he has a job to do and isn’t afraid of ruffling bureaucratic or diplomatic feathers in the process — in fact, he seems to enjoy it. It’s a textbook turnaround strategy.
When a CEO is hired to turn around a failing company, they typically inherit a broken, top-heavy organization that has lost sight of its core mission and become bogged down in debt, riddled with inefficiencies, and generally lethargic and risk-averse. That describes our federal government to a T.
John Schnatter arrives at the 2011 American Music Awards on November 20, 2011, in Los Angeles, California. (JB Lacroix/WireImage via Getty Images)
Under the establishment-led system that dominated Washington before Trump, the people worked for the government. That’s exactly the opposite of how things are supposed to work.
The federal government — and the bureaucrats and career politicians who run it — have forgotten that their job is to serve the interests of the people of the United States. Instead, they serve their own personal and political interests and the interests of their backers, sycophants, and cronies. They spend taxpayer money on projects that gratify their own egos and line their own pockets. They use the power of the U.S. government to achieve ideological objectives that the American people never voted for. Every year, their bloated budgets continue to grow without regard for either actual need or the crippling level of our national debt.
President Trump is putting an end to all that, using creative approaches to circumvent institutional roadblocks and entrenched interests. That’s what it means to run the government “like a business.” Like any good turnaround artist, Trump is cutting spending that isn’t “mission critical” and re-evaluating the status quo at every level.
In short, Donald Trump is doing the job the American people hired him to do.
Papa John Schnatter is the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Papa John’s International.
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