Bully in chief

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President Trump once yelled at Chief of Staff John Kelly so viciously that, per the New York Times, Kelly told staff that “he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country.” Trump once screamed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions so viciously that Sessions, per the Times, described it as “the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.” The president also once called up National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster for the express purpose of — you guessed it — screaming at him.

There is a clear pattern of Trump, through his own personal viciousness and carelessness, abusing and alienating his top deputies, publicly as well as privately. This obviously creates an extremely difficult if not downright hostile work environment in the White House. 

This context is necessary to make sense of Wednesday’s big news: NBC News’s report that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a “moron” after a July 20 meeting. In the months prior to the comment, Trump had repeatedly contradicted Tillerson and publicly undercut him. 

In early April, for example, Tillerson said that the Trump administration would be fine with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad staying in power. Just days later, Trump ordered the US to bomb Assad for the first time, and Tillerson was forced to publicly reverse himself. On June 9, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia and its allies to end their political isolation of Qatar; less than two hours later, Trump sided with the Saudis by labeling Qatar “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” 

The “moron” comment thus appears to be a backlash to the lack of policy direction and public reprimands by the president, at least in part. “It's not like Cabinet officials are just walking around calling the president a moron,” as Musgrave puts it. There are a number of examples of top-level officials being mistreated on topof Tillerson, Kelly, Sessions, and McMasterr

“Toxic on a day-to-day level”: how Trump is mismanaging the White House - Vox