The utter collapse of Donald Trump's 'best people' boast [View all]

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(CNN)As a candidate, Donald Trump would famously boast that if elected, he'd "surround myself only with the best and most serious people" -- adding: "We want top-of-the-line professionals."

The first 18 months of his presidency have repeatedly revealed the fallacy of that pledge, as myriad members of Trump's Cabinet and senior staff have departed -- often under suspicious circumstances -- even as the President himself has railed against the ineptitude of people who still work for him.

Just this weekend, Trump dealt with two major staff problems -- both of which, in different ways -- he created.

he first was a series of interviews by Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide to the President, in which she alleged -- among other things -- that she had been offered money to stay silent after leaving the White House. Manigault Newman also claimed that she secretly taped White House chief of staff John Kelly firing her in the Situation Room. And on Monday morning, she released an audio recording to NBC's "Today" of an apparent phone conversation with Trump that suggested he was unaware of her firing before it happened.

(Omarosa's tell-all memoir of her time in the White House comes out this week.)

The second came when Trump -- amid a now-regular Twitter tirade regarding the special counsel probe -- derided Attorney General Jeff Sessions as "scared stiff and Missing in Action." (And, yes, that capitalization is in the original tweet.)

The twin episodes highlight the "why" behind the massive staff volatility in Trump's White House: He relies almost totally on his gut in the hiring process, he plays aides against each other for sport, he runs incredibly hot and cold on staff, and he is more than willing to publicly embarrass or shame those who work for him.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/13/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-omarosa/index.html?utm_content=2018-08-14T04%3A36%3A04&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_term=image