The President and His Staff

There’s a relationship between the president’s work from the residence and the president’s intervention in the SEAL case. The deeper truth is not that the president distrusts the staff around him, but rather that, for practical purposes, there is no staff around him.

He does not recognize the positions of those who work for him and he makes no distinction between government officials and private citizens. He’s just as likely to take the advice of a Fox News host as he is to take the advice of a cabinet secretary. 

The president is not overseeing a decision-making process; instead he’s ensuring there is no process. Under this model, the president doesn’t consult a staff of principals, he absorbs a chamber of voices without regard to statutory authority or authority of information. 

His counsel on national security is not his National Security Council. All presidents need outside perspective — but imagine a task more useless in today’s world than agonizing over words in a memo to the American president.