Donald Trump rode his once-signature catchphrase “You’re fired” all the way to the Oval Office. But members of the president’s inner circle claim the 79-year-old is more of a pushover than he’d probably like to admit.
A Trump administration official alleged that Trump is fixated on “people lik[ing] him,” according to new reporting in American Canto, a book by Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine’s former star Washington correspondent.
“He’s a conflict avoider. He hates firing people,” the official told Nuzzi. “He knows he’s gotta fire every one of them, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He’s a Gemini. Do you know what a Gemini is? Those are two people in one body. There’s always two faces with Trump.”
Nuzzi, 32, was fired from New York Magazine after she allegedly had a fling with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 71—which began after she interviewed him during his botched 2024 presidential bid.
Prior to fleeing Washington in disgrace, Nuzzi was lauded for her unparalleled access to figures on the right, including Trump, whom she interviewed for the first time at just 21. In her metaphor-heavy tell-all—which, disappointingly, tells very little—the now-Vanity Fair editor sprinkles in snippets from her private conversations with Trump during his first term.
“He avoided conflicts in which he might be compelled to feel pity, to feel like the bad guy,” she wrote.
“This was true even as he played a camp bad guy out loud, and even as his federal government was in a state of constant flux because of the musical chairs his fickle policy and staffing decisions inspired on a near-daily basis.”
Trump—who even attempted to trademark the phrase “You’re fired” in 2004—might be a closeted, passive-aggressive president. Still, Nuzzi suggests he was acutely aware of the chaos swirling around him.
“Everyone associated with this president was just as high-maintenance as he was,” she wrote.
“He inherently distrusted anyone who chose to work for him and sought outside affirmation as often as possible from a vast and varied network of informal advisers whose advice he tended to overvalue… The leaks that defined the era were often aimed as lateral missiles, designed by one staffer or group of aligned staffers to kill off someone perceived as a roadblock to access to the president.”
Nuzzi isn’t the first reporter to chronicle Trump’s aversion to taking responsibility for personnel decisions. In 2018, the BBC reported that despite the constant churn inside his White House, Trump rarely delivered the news himself.
Then–Secretary of State Rex Tillerson learned of his own ousting while in the lavatory, the Daily Beast reported at the time. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and White House staff secretary Rob Porter were all shown the door by then–chief of staff John Kelly, who later resigned.
“I have never heard him say the words ‘You’re fired’ to anyone,” Billy Procida, a vice president for the Trump Organization in the early ’90s, told Politico in 2016. “He really doesn’t fire people. He makes it known he doesn’t want you there, and you move on.”
The pattern has continued well into Trump’s second term, even as pressure mounts over whether embattled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or extravagant FBI Director Kash Patel will be next on the chopping block.
Regardless of who goes next, one thing appears almost certain: the bad news isn’t likely to come from Trump himself.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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