Few people have been more closely associated with job termination than Donald Trump. For years, the signature line on his awful TV show, The Apprentice, was “You’re fired!” He has always treated his employees, past and present, with contempt. If anyone deserves to be canned, without compunction or remorse, it’s Donald Trump. Here’s a recap of some of his firings as Jerk-Boss-in-Chief.
James Comey, FBI Director
Fired in May 2017
Offense: Comey refused Trump’s request, in regard to National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s possibly treasonous behavior, to “see your way clear to letting this go.” Trump later called Comey “a total sleaze” and “a crooked cop” whose firing was “a great day for America.”
Sally Yates, Acting U.S. Attorney General
Fired in January 2017
Offense: Refused to defend Trump’s Muslim travel ban. The White House, in a statement, accused Yates of having “betrayed” the country. The President, according to Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, called her an obscenity.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer”
Fired in June 2018
Offense: He stopped helping cover up Trump’s crimes and began cooperating with the Mueller probe. “He is a weak person,” Trump said. “[He’s] lying and he’s trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me.”*
* They actually do.
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
Fired by Tweet in March 2018
Offense: Tillerson had “a different mind-set, a different thinking” than Trump. Tillerson, the President would later elaborate, “was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.”
Jeff Sessions, U.S. Attorney General
Fired in November 2018
Offense: Refused to remain in control of the Mueller probe despite conflicts of interest, prompting Trump to call Sessions “scared stiff and Missing in Action” and to publicly wonder, “What kind of a man is this?”
Omarosa Manigault Newman, Director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison
Fired in December 2017
Offense: Omarosa, Trump noted, “only said GREAT things about me—until she got fired!” And then he called her “wacky” and said, “People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart.”*
* Look who’s talking.
John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff
Fired in December 2018
Offense: Kelly kept telling him not to do reckless and stupid things. Or as the President put it, “I’ve got another nut job here who thinks he’s running things.”
James “Mad dog” Mattis, Secretary of Defense
Pushed out the door after announcing plans to resign: December 2018
Offense: Mattis failed to somehow “win” a seventeen-year-old war in Afghanistan, causing Trump to ask, “What’s he done for me?”