Donald Trump Is Known for Firing People. But Not This Year.

The Washington Post

15:19 JST, December 14, 2025

One fixture of President Donald Trump’s first term has been absent from the first year of his second term: Trump’s public – and often highly personal – firings of top staff.

Trump’s Cabinet has remained intact since he returned to the White House in January, and the palace intrigue that consumed the West Wing in 2017 has largely been avoided. The change reflects a president eager to avoid the chaos of his first four years and a leader surrounded mainly by loyalists who enjoy deeper ties to the Republican standard bearer than anyone in his first term.

“I think my Cabinet is fantastic,” Trump said on Wednesday, pushing back on reporting that he was unhappy with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem.

“I read these same stories that I’m unhappy with this one or that one and I’m not,” Trump added. “I think the Cabinet has done a great job. … I’m so happy. … We have just a fantastic Cabinet.”

Trump’s second-term Cabinet has generated no shortage of controversy.

Noem has been the subject of persistent speculation in recent weeks around her possible ouster. Hegseth has been dogged by persistent questions about his handling of the job, most recently around missile strikes on vessels thought to be ferrying narcotics in the Caribbean Sea. FBI Director Kash Patel has drawn bipartisan scorn for his handling of key investigations and use of bureau resources. And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was criticized earlier this year for a video where she casually suggested the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”

Democrats have not been shy about suggesting Cabinet members they think should depart. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (Mississippi), the top Democrat on the House committee that questioned Noem on Thursday, ended a blistering critique on her tenure by calling on the secretary to resign rather than “wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies, and lawlessness.”

“Do a real service to the country and just resign, that is if President Trump doesn’t fire you first,” Thompson said.

It is relatively early in Trump’s second White House term, and the bulk of his Cabinet-level departures during the first term began in the second year. But Republicans watching Trump’s second term, including some of those he fired in his first White House stint, say there’s a different dynamic this time: The president is surrounded by people who don’t challenge him.

“In the first term, he fired a lot of people who he didn’t think would give him the answer he wanted,” said John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser in his first term.

“The lesson he learned is if you don’t want people saying, ‘Have you considered these alternatives,’ … the thing to do is to get people to say, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he’s been remarkably successful in the second term in getting exactly that.”

Bolton, who was ousted by Trump (Bolton contends he quit) in 2019, added: “Now, that’s not good for the country, ultimately it’s not going to be good for him, but that’s what he wants.”

Trump, this time around, is surrounded by more people he knows are committed to his political movement and motivations, a distinct difference from the first term, so there appear to be fewer internal conflicts.

Trump met his first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, shortly before appointing him, and the military leader resigned in 2018 over disagreements around the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Trump has since called Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.” Hegseth, by comparison, is someone the president has known for about a decade.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary at the start of Trump’s first term, said that he was still getting to know Trump and what approaches he wanted to take when he started the job, whereas current press secretary Karoline Leavitt had a longer relationship with Trump and more time to plan.

“It’s like a sports team when you play at the beginning and the end of the season,” Spicer said. “You can stop and think and look at the tape. What worked, what didn’t work, who would be different?”

“Part of it is there was actually a playbook this time. And there’s less infighting. Everyone knows their role,” Spicer said. “Last time, some of those people weren’t committed to his agenda. And in some cases were adamantly opposed to it. That’s not the case this time.”

Trump’s second term has not been wholly without departures.

The president began his administration by offering millions of federal workers the chance to resign in a bid to shrink the federal government, and he has summarily forced holdovers from the last administration who have been critical of him out of government councils, such as chef José Andrés out of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council.

And Trump’s Department of Justice has fired dozens of career prosecutors, including career attorneys who worked on the prosecutions of Trump and those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But Trump has yet to outright fire someone from a Cabinet-level position. The closest he has come is with Mike Waltz, who, after a series of missteps, was replaced as national security adviser by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Walz wasn’t kicked out of Trump’s orbit, however; he was instead nominated to become Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Some of the reasons for this term’s lack of firings, Bolton said, are that Trump “doesn’t want the second term defined” by the personnel chaos seen in his first term, viewing any firings as an admission that he made a mistake in hiring that person in the first place.

“If you’ve hired a bunch of people and then you have to fire them, it admits you made a mistake. And as we all know, Donald Trump doesn’t make mistakes,” Bolton said sarcastically.

Trump characterized Bolton as a “lowlife” after his home was raided by the FBI earlier this year, with the former Trump official facing allegations that he illegally possessed or shared classified information.

White House officials pointed to Trump learning from his first term and appointing people more aligned with his agenda.

“I had some people that I didn’t really like too much in my Cabinet, but I didn’t know Washington then,” Trump said shortly after taking office.

“President Trump has assembled the greatest Cabinet in American history,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement. “The members of President Trump’s team are proudly serving our country and helping him rapidly deliver on the promises that earned him the support of nearly 80 million Americans.”

Trump did seem to relish firing people during his first term.

After ousting then-FBI Director James B. Comey (an appointee of President Barack Obama), Trump said he did “a great service to the people in firing him” and mocked him as “now officially … the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI.”

Chief of staff Reince Priebus was left on a rainy tarmac after Trump fired him. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reportedly on the toilet when he learned that Trump was firing him, with the president later calling him “dumb as a rock.”

Trump, a businessman turned politician who entered elected politics only a decade ago, made his name in the entertainment industry as someone who loved firing people. “You’re fired” became the catchphrase of his hit show on NBC, “The Apprentice,” with the then-reality TV star capping his show each week by firing a contestant on air.

Trump has claimed, however, that he doesn’t actually enjoy firing people.

“I do have a heart, and I don’t like firing people,” Trump told “20/20” in 2012. “I usually like to do it very, very soft, softer than [on] ‘The Apprentice.’”