Trump fires former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms from White House post
Published in Political News
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is among the first four presidential appointees from the Biden administration fired by President Donald Trump the day after he was sworn in to office.
In a Tuesday post just after midnight on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, the president entering his second term in office made the announcement using the catchphrase made famous on his reality television series, The Apprentice: “YOU’RE FIRED.”
“Our first day in the White House is not over yet!” Trump wrote. “My Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.”
In a social media post Tuesday morning, Bottoms said she already resigned from her post effective Monday.
“A day late and a dollar short,” she said. “My resignation from the President’s Export Council was submitted January 4, effective yesterday.”
“You can’t fire someone who has already resigned,” Bottoms wrote. “Of all of the things happening in the world, not sure why I am on Donald Trump’s mind at 1:30 am, following his Inauguration, but I count it as a badge of honor.”
Bottoms served as Atlanta’s mayor from 2018 through 2021. She initially joined the White House in 2022 as director of the Office of Public Engagement and senior adviser to President Joe Biden. She extended her tenure in that temporary role several times before she stepped down from that position in late March of that year.
Then in 2023, Bottoms returned to Washington, D.C. as an appointed member of the President’s Export Council, which serves as the principal national advisory committee on international trade.
During her time as mayor, Bottoms often made headlines with her fiery comments against Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp during the pandemic and amid nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd.
In a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bottoms pointed to the pandemic as a tipping point for her relationship with the Trump administration. She said as mayor she struggled with a “lack of predictability” coming from the Trump White House.
“I give the example, in the midst of the pandemic, the remarks that the President made whether it was inject yourself with bleach or really encouraging people not to trust the science on COVID,” she said.
But she also slammed the Republican president over his immigration policies and handling of the 2020 census. The pair were at even worse odds over how officials responded to mass calls for police reform during protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In a CNN interview in May 2020, Bottoms said Trump’s rhetoric around the nationwide protests was “making it worse,” and that he “should just stop talking.” She also signed onto a letter with dozens of other large city leaders condemning the president’s deployment of federal agents to quell protests.
Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon told the AJC that Trump is “making it clear that his mandate to enact the America First agenda will not be frustrated from within the federal bureaucracy.”
“Keisha Lance Bottoms made the disgusting comment that ‘Trump would eat his own children if he found it prudent’ and so it is no surprise she is being purged from any role in the federal government,” McKoon said.
©2025 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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