A Survival Guide for the Trump White House
All the White House comings and goings raise a question: What does it take to remain in President Donald Trump’s favor and keep your job? If the show were called Survivor: White House Edition (and with the former Apprentice host as president, the conceit feels apt), what sorts of skills does one need to avoid the ax?
No president in recent memory has churned through senior aides and Cabinet officials at a faster clip than Trump, with turnover accelerating as he fumes over his administration’s struggle to curb migration at the southern border.
Last week, Trump began clearing out the upper echelon of the Homeland Security department. First, he tweeted the ouster of the department’s secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, then followed by removing Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles. More firings loom as Trump loses patience with officials who can’t create the impregnable border he demands.
[Read: Kirstjen Nielsen shows why it’s impossible to restrain Trump]
Nielsen’s is the 15th Cabinet-level departure since Trump took office a little more than two years ago, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution told me. By comparison, after three full years in office, Barack Obama presided over seven Cabinet-level departures; George W. Bush, four.
“It’s not just higher” under
