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President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he planned to replace current Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) \u2014 and while the impact of that shake-up will certainly be felt across the administration and the Senate, it also marks a clear departure from the frequent personnel shakeups of Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
By this point in Trump\u2019s first administration, more than half a dozen major players<\/a> had already been summarily dismissed \u2014 from an adviser and a deputy chief of staff to Health and Human Services Secretary and even Secretary of State. And although a few of those who got the presidential boot were holdovers from former President Barack Obama\u2019s administration, a fair few were people Trump had believed were the right fit for his administration \u2014 until they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n It was no surprise, for example, that Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates<\/a> \u2014 an Obama appointee \u2014 in the first ten days of his administration. General Michael Flynn lasted three weeks before he was fired as National Security Advisor. Obama\u2019s Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, resigned by mid-April, and in early May, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey<\/a>.<\/p>\n But by mid-July, the president was already on his second White House Press Secretary after Sean Spicer resigned, and by the end of the month, the tenure of other staffers was being measured in \u201cScaramuccis<\/a>\u201d after Anthony Scaramucci only lasted ten days as White House Communications Director. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was also fired before the end of July, and advisors Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka were gone before the end of August.<\/p>\n The first cabinet member to go was Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who resigned from his post in late September. And by the end of March 2018, two more cabinet members were out \u2014 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson<\/a> and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin<\/a> \u2014 along with a laundry list of lower-level staffers.<\/p>\n Trump almost constantly faced attacks and leaks from staff on their way out the door. Omarosa Manigault Newman<\/a>, for example, was fired in December of 2017 \u2014 and within a year, she\u2019d released a tell-all book and made a slew of accusations against the man who first made her a star on NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Apprentice.\u201d<\/p>\n Scaramucci<\/a> also turned on Trump after he was fired, referring to his former boss \u2014 and former friend \u2014 as an \u201corange wrecking ball,\u201d and said in 2019 that Trump was suffering from \u201cearly stage fascism.\u201d Tillerson was slightly more measured in his criticisms of the president, calling him \u201cundisciplined\u201d and claiming that he \u201cdisregards briefing reports.\u201d<\/p>\n After screening more strictly for loyalty his second time around, Trump\u2019s staff retention has been markedly higher.<\/p>\n Noem is just the second big name in the second Trump administration to be removed from her post \u2014 the first being former National Security Adviser Michael Waltz<\/a> \u2014 and neither of the two have been asked or ordered to leave the administration entirely. Waltz has since been appointed<\/a> to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations, and Noem will become<\/a> Trump\u2019s Special Envoy for \u201cThe Shield of the Americas,\u201d a western hemisphere security initiative that is set to be unveiled in the coming days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n