Washington was surprised to learn that Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, will be leaving her post early in the new year. Powell, one of the few veterans of the George W. Bush administration to take a senior role under Trump, had been something of a rock of normalcy in an abnormal White House. In the administration’s first few weeks, her experience was a prized asset. Powell is, moreover, personally close to both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump—which is the nearest anyone without the last name “Trump” can get to job security in the West Wing.
Her desire to leave after one year was apparently well known, according to administration officials. Powell’s family remained in New York—where she had been a partner at the investment bank Goldman Sachs—and she commuted back and forth weekly. She timed her exit to follow the release of the president’s national security strategy, on which she worked closely with National Security Council staffer Nadia Schadlow.
Powell’s decision to move on from the White House so early in the administration was her own, and she leaves with many fans. “We are losing an invaluable member of the president’s national security team,” says Defense Secretary James Mattis. “She is one of the most talented and effective leaders with whom I have ever served,” says her boss, H. R. McMaster. But it remains a very unusual choice, and the White House door may only just have started revolving.
In most administrations, senior staff stick around for at least two years. This is not most White Houses. Rumors of Gary Cohn’s exit have been swirling ever since the head of the National Economic Council—another ex-Goldman banker—was passed over for the job of Federal Reserve chairman. The domestic policy director, Andrew Bremberg, has expressed frustration and may be looking to leave soon. Administration officials are expecting more departures within the next several weeks.
“All White House jobs are burn-out jobs,” says Ari Fleischer, who was George W. Bush’s first press secretary. “It’s just in this White House they burn out a lot faster.”
Karen Hughes, Bush’s communications director and counselor, was the first major figure to head for the exits in that administration, doing so in July 2002, some 18 months after Bush was inaugurated. There are scant other examples of senior West Wing staff leaving after a single year. The highest-profile name to leave the Obama White House in early 2009 was Desirée Rogers, the social secretary who served in the East Wing—and that was shortly after her involvement with a scandal at a state dinner. Roy Neel, a longtime aide to Al Gore who was deputy White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, announced his depature at the end of 1993—becoming a lobbyist for the telecom industry the next year.
But if more choose to follow Powell out the door, it won’t be a shock to those familiar with the internal strife in the Trump West Wing. Officials frequently complain about the chaos of a White House that is chronically understaffed. There’s been plenty of turnover already in Trump’s first year: national security adviser Michael Flynn, communications director Mike Dubke, deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus, communications director Anthony Scaramucci (who served for just 11 days!), and chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Then there’s Omarosa Manigault, the breakout star from Trump’s reality show The Apprentice, who wound up as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. Her bizarre exit from the White House on December 12—she says she resigned, reports say she was fired—was hardly a critical blow to the West Wing’s operations. But the episode was indicative of the disorder that makes working at the Trump White House difficult.
“I just think it’s hard enough to work in a White House when it is functioning perfectly and when the president is popular,” says Fleischer. But in a tumultuous West Wing whose president is looking at a dismal 36 percent approval rating from Gallup? Don’t be surprised to see more staff heading for the door soon.
Michael Warren is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
