Trump Goes Silent

After the most trying week yet of his young presidency, in which members of his own party leveled criticism at his decision to fire the FBI director amid a probe of his campaign's potential ties to Russia, President Trump seems to have gone dark.

After a Friday morning tweetstorm suggested that he had secret records of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey and threatened to cancel daily press briefings because his aides couldn't be expected to deliver accurate information, Trump exercised some rare discipline. But that doesn't mean he's gone silent. In private, aides say the president is seething after a chaotic week, collecting his grievances against his senior-most aides since the beginning of his presidency. Trump has never been fully satisfied by his factionalized team, especially as reports of infighting dominated the news. But the current situation is different, as those factions were largely united in advising Trump against canning Comey. The challenge to any large-scale shakeup—as Trump has been considering in conversations that aides say amount to little more than venting—remain as they have been for months. Already, Trump has had difficulty attracting top-tier talent to his Administration, and there is little reason to expect that the replacements will be any more able than the current occupants. The president, though, has been less concerned by competence than with loyalty.

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