‘Fight club mentality’: Trump avoids firings as pressure grows

For nearly two decades, Donald Trump traded on the phrase, “you’re fired.”

That sentiment is so far nowhere to be found in his White House.

This year has already brought negative headlines that, during the president’s first term, could easily have led to sackings — from Elon Musk paring back Social Security to a stock market that dipped into correction territory to the ongoing drama known as Signalgate.

But the heads aren’t rolling in his administration. Trump has, his first term adviser Steve Bannon said, learned the lesson of a term during which the president dismissed personnel quickly and often for controversies or missteps (including Bannon himself, famously fired in 2017). This time, Trump doesn’t want to be seen as giving in to opponents.

“The lessons of Mike Flynn are resonating in this,” Bannon told Semafor in describing what he called the president’s “no scalps policy.” Flynn, Trump’s initial first-term national security adviser, got pushed out after just 23 days for giving “incomplete information” to then-Vice President Mike Pence about calls he made to Russia’s ambassador.

Now Mike Waltz, Trump’s first second-term pick for national security adviser, is facing harsh scrutiny inside and outside the White House for adding a journalist to a Signal conversation where sensitive military information was shared. Someconservatives are openly suggesting Waltz play the fall guy, but Trump is resisting making a move that some of his aides suspect would simply fuel outside criticism.

If Trump’s opponents “taste blood in the water, it’s just a feeding frenzy,” one administration official said, and the administration is “not even interested” in setting that off.

It’s a demonstration of what Bannon called the Trump White House’s “fight club mentality.” It also suggests that Trump doesn’t need accountability from Waltz or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared sensitive military information in the group chat — even though the president has attacked former President Joe Biden for not axing people who made mistakes.