When Trump's effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census was blocked by the Supreme Court, I casually mused that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would be the next cabinet secretary to depart the Trump regime.
I was wrong about that as Labor Secretary Alex Acosta was actually the next guy out, but Wilbur Ross may not be far behind him.
NBC News reports that Trump has been making calls and telling anyone who will listen to him that he wants to replace Ross.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has told aides and allies that he is considering removing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross after a stinging Supreme Court defeat on adding a citizenship question to the census, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.
Frustrated by Ross' leadership of the Census Bureau, which is within the Commerce Department, Trump has been making calls to allies outside the White House musing about replacing Ross. [...]
The president has suggested to allies he wants a more hard-charging leader as Commerce Secretary, despite having once talked up Ross as a "killer."
The only thing Ross has ever killed is careers and investments. He's not actually a billionaire according to Forbes, and he's been sued by former business partners who say he defrauded them.
But that's not why Trump has soured on Ross. Trump is displeased because their effort to cut millions of humans out of the next census was defeated.
It's fair to say that Ross is mostly to blame for their failure as he did almost everything wrong and managed to lose in front of a very conservative court. But with that said, I think we all know that Ross added the citizenship question because the White House told him to. That doesn't necessarily make Ross a scapegoat, but they're all guilty.
Government lawyers and the Commerce Department could never give the courts a good, substantive reason for adding the citizenship question because admitting that they added it to foster white supremacy was not really an option.