In Trump’s White House the constant is chaos

President Donald Trump explained this week that he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson because they do not see eye to eye on certain major issues. Then Trump hired Larry Kudlow as his economic adviser even though they do not see eye to eye on certain major issues.

In the never-ending reality-show drama of the Trump administration, characters come and go and sometimes come back again based as much on personality, chemistry and the mood of the moment as on ideology or competence. Those who get on Trump’s bad side are shown the exit, and those who connect with him rise through the ranks.

The particular alchemy of that equation has eluded any number of people who were once masters of their own universe, as was Tillerson, who dominated the oil industry as CEO of Exxon Mobil. Trump has cast aside both establishment figures and nationalist outsiders. He has recruited confidants he genuinely respects as well as virtual strangers who impressed him on television. He has even swung hot and cold on his own family members occupying offices in the West Wing.

Anyone looking for a pattern should focus squarely on the man behind the desk in the Oval Office. Trump’s presidency of one depends not on the team around him but on the instincts inside him. Where others see bedlam, he sees purpose. “I like conflict,” he said the other day, a statement that elicited no objections from fact checkers. Sometimes the conflict seems to be within himself.

Other presidents seek to minimize disorder; Trump seems to maximize it. He fired Tillerson shortly before heading to Air Force One to fly to California to inspect prototypes of his border wall,

“I like conflict.”

— President Donald Trump