The dismissal of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Secret Service director Randolph "Tex" Alles serve as a reminder that President Donald Trump has among the highest turnover rates of any modern president. But why is that, exactly? Is it simply because he is a poor manager, or is there actually a strategy behind how the president shakes up his staff?
Writing for CNN, columnist Gloria Borger argues that Trump runs his administration this way very intentionally — because while it leads to turmoil, it's turmoil that he can claim ownership of.
"The boss operates on his very own chaos theory," writes Borger. "It's not new to Trump, but it's new to the Oval Office. And it's a disturbing — even frightening — way to govern. Trump's version of chaos, according to [a] longtime associate, 'has to do with his level of entertainment of himself. That means doing the opposite of what everyone suggests and then showing that I was right.' His instincts, this source says, 'are not well thought out or researched,' but he has 'found this place of doing the remarkable unexpected thing and, at the end of the day, sometimes he gets lucky.'"
This new style is a contrast, Borger says, from the early days of his presidency, when he sought out GOP stalwarts like former Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus to run things at the White House.
But it is similar to how Trump ran his casinos - his former Atlantic City casino manager, Jack O'Donnell, said that after a third of Trump's slot machines were shut down, he chose to "shame and belittle, and berate, and to threaten to fire, and demand firings in the midst of the chaos."
Trump no longer owns those casinos, as they all went bankrupt. The question is what the endgame for his presidency will be.
