What Noem Ouster Says About Trump Administration 2.0

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he planned to replace current Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) — 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’s first term.

By this point in Trump’s first administration, more than half a dozen major players had already been summarily dismissed — 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’s administration, a fair few were people Trump had believed were the right fit for his administration — until they weren’t.

It was no surprise, for example, that Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates — an Obama appointee — in the first ten days of his administration. General Michael Flynn lasted three weeks before he was fired as National Security Advisor. Obama’s Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, resigned by mid-April, and in early May, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

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 “Scaramuccis” 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.

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 — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin — along with a laundry list of lower-level staffers.

Trump almost constantly faced attacks and leaks from staff on their way out the door. Omarosa Manigault Newman, for example, was fired in December of 2017 — and within a year, she’d released a tell-all book and made a slew of accusations against the man who first made her a star on NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

Scaramucci also turned on Trump after he was fired, referring to his former boss — and former friend — as an “orange wrecking ball,” and said in 2019 that Trump was suffering from “early stage fascism.” Tillerson was slightly more measured in his criticisms of the president, calling him “undisciplined” and claiming that he “disregards briefing reports.”

After screening more strictly for loyalty his second time around, Trump’s staff retention has been markedly higher.

Noem is just the second big name in the second Trump administration to be removed from her post — the first being former National Security Adviser Michael Waltz — and neither of the two have been asked or ordered to leave the administration entirely. Waltz has since been appointed to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations, and Noem will become Trump’s Special Envoy for “The Shield of the Americas,” a western hemisphere security initiative that is set to be unveiled in the coming days.