Trump learns he has no friends

Ten days after promoting Anthony "Mooch" Scaramucci to White House communications director, President Trump has told him, "You're fired!" 

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci last just 10 days.

The dismissal comes only days after Mooch launched an extremely profane tirade against the rest of the White House staff and after Mooch set about torpedoing the hapless Reince Priebus, who was then White House chief of staff. Priebus was fired last mid-week.

Could the last few days have been a time when Trump learned the most valuable lesson any new president can learn? It is simply this: A president must have no friends.

Every president entering the first term should study what President Dwight Eisenhower told President-Elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: "All the decisions you will make," said Eisenhower, "will be hard decisions."

Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items.

The most difficult items require the most hard-minded man (or woman, when that day comes). Former sentimental attachments are worthless and meaningless. Former personal bonds are valueless. There is the weight of the country bearing down upon the president's shoulders and no one else's in the administration. No one, including decades-long friends, associates, campaign loyalists, who is not helping to bear that weight, can be protected or retained just because s/he was once close or valuable.

I am hoping that President Trump has learned that lesson. I also have to think that this topic - and Anthony Scaramucci personally - was on the agenda when former DHS Secretary John Kelly, a retired Marine four-star general, discussed Kelly taking the chief of staff slot, which he did today.

John Kelly not long after being sword in as President Trump's second chief of staff.

Maybe retired Marines and retired Army officers think alike, but I commented elsewhere at the time that the first thing Kelly needed to do is take Scaramucci to the woodshed, hard. And it looks like he did:

Mr. Scaramucci had boasted about reporting directly to the president, not the chief of staff. But the decision to remove him came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said.

The notice to the staff went out shortly after Kelly took over.

He told aides gathered in early-morning staff meetings that he intended to impose a new sense of order and operational discipline that had been absent under his predecessor.

The real question, though, is whether Trump will allow Kelly to exercise oversight and have directive authority over persons named Ivanka, Jared or Junior. If not, well, he can probably start to prepare three envelopes.