Reporter reveals how Trump managed to get ‘the presidency he has always wanted’

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.

Trump, Cook explained, expects his administration to function like the Trump Organization. At this point, according to Cook, he is “at the center of the action” and “fully in command” — which is the “presidency Trump has always wanted.”

A former Trump administration official, quoted anonymously, told Politico that Trump is now overseeing “a government of one in the same way in which the Trump Organization was a company of one.” And the interviewee went on to explain, “In the first year in office, President Trump was new to the job. He was more susceptible to advisers and advice. There were more people urging caution or trying to get him to adhere to processes. Now, there are very few people in the White House who view that as their role, or as something they want to try to do — or who even have a relationship with him.”

Trump, Cook observes, has had “the highest senior staff turnover of any recent president by far” — which has “left fewer forces trying to bend the president to the usual process of the top ranks of government.” And now that Trump is “receiving less pushback from staff and advisers,” Cook says, the Trump Administration is looking more and more like the Trump Organization.

Timothy O’Brien, author of “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald“ and executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, told Politico, “The Trump I’m seeing now, to me, is the same Donald Trump who has existed for the 50 of his last 73 years. This is very much in keeping with how he rolled in the business world. The only difference is now he is doing it on the global stage.”