Dear President Trump,
You are the President of the United States. This brings with it a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure, and a lot of people you are the boss of.
I’m sure you know this, however, because you have become infamous, in just the first quarter of your presidency, for the number of people you have fired, or “encouraged” out of office.
Let’s put the list together, shall we? In order of firing, we have:
- Preet Barbara, US Attorney for the Southern District of NY
- Sally Yates, US Deputy Attorney General
- James Comey, FBI Director
- Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
But that is not all, because then there are the resignations (aka, “encouragings"):
- Katie Walsh
- Michael T. Flynn
- Walter Shaub
- Michael Dubke
- Sean Spicer
- Reince Priebus
- Anthony Scaramucci
- Steve Bannon
- Sebastian Gorka
- Tom Price
- Omarosa Manigault
- Andrew McCabe
- Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald
- Rob Porter
- Hope Hicks
- Gary Cohn
That is a total of 20 people, Mr. Trump. You have been in office for 14 months, so that’s about 1.5 people per month.
I will admit that some of the people in the latter list may have left because of personal reasons, and not because you forced them out. However, I am willing to bet that the majority of them had differing opinions or did something you did not like, and this put them out of a job.
Need I remind you that this is not The Apprentice? You may have great practice, and even consider yourself an expert, at the whole “You’re Fired” routine, but there is no place for that in the Oval Office.
Most recently, you fired Rex Tillerson by tweet (a whole other issue), citing that he had a different mindset.
So, what you’re saying is that you believe it is best to fill the White House with people who think the same? No differences in opinion, no disagreement allowed?
That is an extremely dangerous way to run a country. The entire point of having so many people under your wing and having three branches of government is so that differing and conflicting opinions may surface. These differing opinions lead to productive debate so that the final decision reached is well vetted and reasonable. Similar opinions lead to complacency.
The chaos that you have created from all these firings reflects poorly on our reputation with the rest of the world. How are our allies supposed to trust you, and the United States? What if you decide that there are too many “differing opinions” between us and them, and spontaneously choose to kick them off our precious “allies of the United States list”?
You are already a combative and impulsive President, and now you are adding untrustworthy to that list.
The free range you are given as President does not compare to how others in a leadership position may be treated. If the CEO of a company were to begin firing employees at a high rate (with little explanation as to why), they would be questioned. Coworkers would be concerned. If there was a Board of Directors, they would surely investigate. I’d bet that this person would eventually be let go or fired themselves. They would not be allowed to continue unchecked. It is simply not a sustainable model of leadership.
For reasons unknown to me, you, Mr. Trump, have been allowed to fire numerous employees, and push out others. And you are the leader of our country, not a company.
For the sake of every citizen, I hope that this pattern does not continue.
I don’t expect you to have a change in opinion yourself, so it is going to be left to those with different mindsets. And you can't fire all of them.
An outraged citizen,
Cassandra Albrecht
