When the media reported last week that former National Security Advisor John Bolton was leaving the Trump Administration — either because he quit or because President Donald Trump fired him — it was obvious that Bolton had grown increasingly frustrated with the president. But Bolton was hardly the only member of Trump’s administration who became fed up: everyone from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to former Defense Secretary James Mattis has complained that Trump couldn’t stand it when someone disagreed with him. And journalist Nancy Cook, in a report for Politico, asserts that Trump now has the type of administration he wants: an administration of loyalists and sycophants.
“After four national security advisers, three chiefs of staff, three directors of oval office operations and five communications directors, the president is now finding the White House finally functions in a way that fits his personality,” Cook reports. “Trump doubters have largely been ousted, leaving supporters to cheer him on and execute his directives with fewer constraints than ever before.”
Some previous presidents have been criticized by their supporters for being too quick to take the word of key advisers. President George W. Bush, for example, was sometimes criticized for being too quick to go along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on foreign policy; President Barack Obama was criticized by some of his supporters for being overly reliant on former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on economic policy. But with Trump, a common complaint is that he could care less what advisers have to say.
View the complete September 19 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.