There is aways turnover within a President’s staff….
But Donald Trump seems to have the record by ‘miles’….
Not just A Mile….
The rate of turnover among senior level advisers to President Trump has generated a great deal of attention. Below, we offer four resources to help measure and contextualize this turnover. The first set of resources tracks turnover among senior-ranking advisers in the executive office of the president (which does not include Cabinet secretaries), whereas the second set of resources tracks turnover in the Cabinet.
TURNOVER ON THE PRESIDENT’S “A TEAM”
President Trump’s “A Team” turnover is 89% as of August 14, 2020
The following chart and table reflect turnover among the most influential positions within the executive office of the president. This data is compiled and tracked by Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, who refers to this group of advisers as the president’s “A Team.” The list of positions that make up the “A Team” is based on National Journal “Decision Makers” editions, and Dunn Tenpas’s methodology is described in detail in a report she published in January 2018. The chart and table below will be updated as additional members of the “A Team” depart their positions. It is important to note the following:
- Because the “A Team” is made up of members of the executive office of the president, it does not include Cabinet secretaries.
- The count for turnover among Donald Trump’s administration is ongoing.
- Each position on the “A Team” is only counted once. If multiple people hold and depart from the same position (e.g., communications director), only the initial departure is tracked/affects the turnover rate. For more information on these instances, see the “serial turnover” section below.
Set out below is a list of the senior level departures from the executive office of the president since the beginning of the Trump administration (each of the 65 “A Team” positions is only counted once toward the turnover rate, thus, this chart only includes the first person to hold/depart a given position). Highlighted text indicates a position that went through multiple instances of turnover; see below for more details….
Note….
Few if any ex-staffer has a good or nice thing to sat about the working for this President….
“Fear: Trump in the White House,” by Bob Woodward, is the latest book to detail chaos in the president’s immediate orbit. Excerpts were published Tuesday and immediately brought to mind several disparaging comments that Trump’s staff is reported to have made about the commander in chief:
• Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader,” according to accounts of Woodward’s book that were published by The Washington Post. The comments came after a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19 in which Trump questioned why the government was using resources to maintain a U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula. Mattis told Trump that presence was necessary “in order to prevent World War III.”
• White House chief of staff John Kelly called Trump “an idiot” and said he thought the president was “unhinged,” The Post also reported. NBC News first reported in May that Kelly had referred to the president as an idiot multiple times, in addition to making several remarks “insulting the president’s intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country.” Kelly has denied that he ever called Trump an idiot.
• Omarosa Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking African-American staffer in the West Wing, claimed in a book published earlier this summer that Trump is a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” In her book, “Unhinged,” Manigault Newman said she witnessed Trump use racial epithets while describing presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, who is half Filipino.
• Earlier this year, Michael Wolff detailed in his book “Fire and Fury” that a number of individuals in the Trump administration insulted the president’s intelligence. Both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former chief of staff Reince Priebus called Trump an “idiot,” Wolff wrote. Former economic adviser Gary Cohn said Trump was “dumb as shit,” and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the president was a “dope,” according to the book.
• Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said in November 2017 that Trump was “like an 11-year-old child,” according to Vanity Fair. He also said that Trump had “lost his step.” Bannon had left the White House in August 2017.
• Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in July 2017 called Trump a “moron,” NBC News reported. The comments came after Tillerson had a meeting at the Pentagon with members of the White House national security team and Cabinet officials….
image…Chip Somodevilla/Getty