People don’t want to work for Trump – now there’s a surprise.

He says they do though.

“There is a very small recruiting pool of people that are acceptable to President Trump and individuals who have had requisite experience that would want these jobs,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a researcher who specializes in White House staff turnover at the Brookings Institution. “That, in combination with his impulsive nature and his tendency to fire people more than any other president that I’ve studied, means that there’s going to be vacancies for a long period of time.”

On multiple occasions, Trump has said people are clamoring to work in his administration.

“I have five people that want it very much. I mean, a lot more than that would like to have it,” Trump said Wednesday of possible replacements for Bolton. “We’ll be announcing somebody next week, but we have some highly qualified people.”

He doesn’t though. He’s lying.

He made a similar claim last December about replacing John Kelly as chief of staff. “We have a lot of people that want the job chief of staff,” Trump said. “Over a period of a week or two or maybe less, we’ll announce who it’s going to be.”

Instead, a few days later, he announced that Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would serve as acting chief of staff.

More than 270 days later, Mulvaney is still “acting” as is Russell Vought, who is the acting budget director.

On Aug. 8, Trump said a new director of national intelligence would “be named shortly” after Dan Coats left the post and Trump’s initial pick ran into vetting problems and withdrew from consideration. “That’s a job that everybody wants,” Trump boasted.

But, more than a month later, there’s an acting director and no indication that Trump will name a permanent pick anytime soon.

“As far as I’m concerned, acting is good,” Trump recently said when asked about the high number of people in seemingly unending acting roles. “Acting gives you great flexibility that you don’t have with permanent, so I’m OK with the word ‘acting.’ But when I like people, I make them permanent. But I can leave acting for a long period of time.”

Note that he’s telling all his “acting” people that he doesn’t like them.

For those who answer the call to serve in the Trump administration, the jobs are more ephemeral than in past administrations and there’s a decent chance of leaving with a dash of reputational damage.

“I can’t say that anybody’s reputation has been enhanced, and I can point out a number of people who look a lot worse after having worked for President Trump,” said Tenpas of the Brookings Institution.

As Tenpas has tracked firings and transitions in the Trump administration, she has run out of superlatives and space in her chart on staff turnover in past administrations. She created a new chart just to track “serial turnover,” when a senior position has been held by three or more individuals.

“This is a new chart because it’s never happened before. I had no reason to make this chart,” Tenpas said.

No worries. It’s not an administration, it’s a re-run of The Apprentice.