President Trump insists his isn't a White House in chaos, but it's hard to deny the near constant churn of key aides, including Tuesday's announced departure of economic adviser Gary Cohn. A full 43 percent of top-level positions in the Trump White House have seen turnover. That is not normal.
In fact, the Trump White House has had more turnover among senior aides in the first 13 1/2 months of Trump's term than his four most recent predecessors had
after two years.
"After two full years, President Obama was at 24 percent and President Bush was at 33 percent," said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution and the White House Transition Project, whose research specialty includes staff turnover. "So, [Trump] already passed them with his first-year turnover. It continues to surge."
In the hours before Cohn's resignation was announced, Trump foreshadowed a shake-up.
"Yeah, there'll be people — I'm not going to be specific — but there'll be people that change," Trump said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference. "They always change. Sometimes they want to go out and do something else."
One would note he was speaking of "people," plural, as in multiple expected departures. Trump tweeted much the same Tuesday morning.
In addition to Cohn's departure, several other staffers have recently left or announced their imminent resignations. Communications director Hope Hicks and Jared Kushner advisers Josh Raffel and Reed Cordish have all announced their departures while staff secretary Rob Porter was ousted after allegations of spousal abuse came to light.
A big question now is: Who will be next? Cohn had assembled a team of policy aides who helped craft the White House infrastructure plan and tax framework. With Cohn leaving, will they stay? History would indicate that when someone at Cohn's level leaves, others follow.
"It's a domino effect. When a senior person leaves, there are other people that leave as well," Tenpas said. "Kind of by necessity because the new person isn't necessarily going to want to work with them."
And if the swirl of Washington chatter is accurate, Cohn isn't the only big-name White House official on the knife's edge. Chief of staff John Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and adviser/son-in-law Kushner are all reportedly earning the ire of the president.
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