For more than a decade he built his brand on two words: “You’re fired!” And in his first term in the White House, Donald Trump did not hesitate to show his staff the door, often via an abrasive tweet.
But since resuming the US presidency in January, Trump, the former host of the reality TV show The Apprentice, appears to have become an uncharacteristically bashful boss, more disposed to hiring than firing.
Whereas his first term was marked by chaos – his first 14 months saw the highest cabinet turnover of any president for a century – his second has been comparatively stable, with a team remaining almost entirely intact.
“I think my cabinet is fantastic,” Trump said recently, dismissing reports of dissatisfaction with his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, or his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. “I read these same stories that I’m unhappy with this one or that one – and I’m not. I think the cabinet has done a great job … We have just a fantastic cabinet.”
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That confidence has persisted despite a steady drumbeat of controversy. Hegseth has come under scrutiny for his misuse of the Signal messaging app and handling of military operations in the Caribbean. Noem has faced criticism over her extravagant spending and a feud with the border czar, Tom Homan.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, has drawn bipartisan opprobrium over his stewardship of sensitive investigations, while the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, raised eyebrows earlier this year after warning, in a video message, that the world was “on the brink of nuclear annihilation”.
The closest brush with dismissal came when the then national security adviser Mike Waltz was quietly replaced by Marco Rubio – only to be recycled as Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations.
Critics say the reason is simple: the president has assembled a court of loyalists, bound less by institutional independence than by personal allegiance. They point to cabinet meetings in which secretaries strive to outdo each other by lavishing bountiful praise on their boss.
Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “They’re functioning in an environment now when it’s loyalty über alles. If you are loyal and a fighter, the scales will tend to tip in your favour, even if you make mistakes. The mistakes are secondary and the loyalty and constant aggression are primary. I’m sure Trump loves the fact that Hegseth never backs down, never admits error.”
There are further reasons for Trump to say you are not fired. Axing a cabinet member would mean having to find a replacement, and that could involve a messy confirmation process in the Senate. Even when Trump was at the zenith of his power earlier this year, Hegseth was confirmed by just one vote while Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr, now the health secretary, cleared the bar by two.
Now, with Trump’s approval rating plummeting and midterm elections looming, the Senate might prove more sceptical about the president’s unconventional choices.
Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to Bill Clinton, added: “It’s fair to say that Republicans in Congress are less compliant than they were a year ago because they have surely noticed that the president’s standing with the public has declined remarkably and that they could be dragged down with him.
“You can imagine that the confirmation proceedings would be arenas for unfavourable reviews of what had happened in those departments or agencies under the prior leadership during the first year, and that wouldn’t be good either.”
Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist, agreed. He said: “Trump knows at this point there are fewer possibilities for a Senate confirmation for the kind of people he wants now. He’s not going to get another Hegseth, he’s not going to get another Gabbard, he’s not going to get another RFK Jr. Those days are done.”
In addition, Trump does not want to admit that he made a mistake. Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, added: “Trump doesn’t want to fire anybody. The reason is he feels like that lets the media win. He thinks the media gets something when he fires people.”
The president’s restraint this time around marks a contrast with a first term punctuated by high-profile sackings: FBI director James Comey, dubbed “the worst leader in the history of the bureau”; White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, abandoned on a rainy tarmac; and secretary of state Rex Tillerson, reportedly dumped while sitting on a toilet.
No one embodied the turmoil and turbulence better than Anthony Scaramucci, dismissed after just 10 days as White House communications director because of a crude verbal tirade against other members of Trump’s staff.
The difference now is partly one of familiarity. Trump 1.0 appointed figures such as Jim Mattis, a revered former general whom the president barely knew and who later resigned as defence secretary over foreign policy disagreements. Hegseth, by contrast, has been in Trump’s orbit for more than a decade and is an unstinting praise singer.
Tara Setmayer, co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee, said: “This time around the reason you don’t see the same amount of firings is because the sycophancy is the point. Trump has loaded his cabinet up with people who are loyalists first and foremost and not competent.
“He’s neutered Congress in a way that is unprecedented. With the combination of lack of accountability and loyalists at a level we didn’t see in the first term, it’s not a surprise that you haven’t seen high turnover. They’re doing everything Trump wants them to do at great expense to the country.”
But there have been purges of a different kind. Trump began his presidency by encouraging millions of federal workers to resign and has removed holdovers from advisory councils, while the justice department has dismissed dozens of career prosecutors – including those linked to investigations involving Trump himself.
