In the past two months, President Donald Trump has repeatedly surprised many of his own closest advisers with the timing or substance of major public pronouncements: a potential troop withdrawal from Syria, steep new tariffs on key imports and the possibility of rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

This week, it happened again, with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley — a Cabinet member — left dangling after Trump decided not to proceed with new Russia sanctions she’d already mentioned on national television.


These episodes have often left Trump’s staff scrambling to get more information, moderate the president’s position or change his mind altogether.

While people close to the president say Trump has always been mercurial, some of the president’s allies attribute the recent spate of public disconnects to the departure of loyal aides who were skilled at translating his impulses into legible stances on key issues — and, perhaps more importantly, at keeping all the relevant White House and agency staffers in the loop on big decisions.

“There’s nobody there that can say to him, ‘Mr. President, you can’t do that,’” said one former White House official.

The West Wing was particularly hard hit by the departure of White House communications director Hope Hicks and staff secretary Rob Porter, two of the rare figures in Trump’s inner circle who could corral the president — at least some of the time — and who could also inform their colleagues when they thought the president might be inclined to tear up plans or act on a whim.

“Part of it is he’s gaining confidence in terms of how he makes decisions,” said a former administration official. “He’s now been thinking about a lot of these issues for more than a year and he doesn’t feel it’s necessary to deliberate.”

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Trump listened to Hicks’ advice because he trusted her so deeply, administration officials said. And Porter, along with former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, managed to tame an often unwieldy vetting process, establishing a system for gathering input from Trump’s divided aides before a new policy was rolled out.

By the time he resigned in February, Porter had become skilled at interpreting Trump’s policy demands, explaining the legal and political hurdles, and encouraging the president to allow his staff to conduct additional analysis before moving forward.

There’s also been huge turnover in the past two weeks at the National Security Council including the resignation of its spokesman, Michael Anton, whose role would have included keeping Haley in the loop on the fluid nature of the debate over the Russia sanctions.

Deputy national security adviser Ricky Waddell, who was also heavily involved in the sanctions discussion, is also planning to leave the White House.

“People who are really good and have experience with how Washington works, a lot of those people have left or are leaving,” said the former administration official.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Today’s White House is full of people who have the president’s ear on narrow issues, like policy adviser Stephen Miller on immigration.

But there are few people close to the president who can take ownership of the administration’s policy portfolio as a whole.

Chief of staff John Kelly, who would traditionally play a key role in shaping major policy issues with Trump, has increasingly been sidelined, especially as the president has brought on new staff — including National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, who advises Trump on taxes and economic issues, and National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has taken a lead role on Syria and Iran.

The president himself feels personally invigorated by the changes at the National Economic Council and National Security Council, according to one administration official.

In recent weeks, Chris Liddell, the former assistant to the president for strategic initiatives who’s been named deputy chief of staff for policy, has stepped into the coordinating role Porter held before he left the White House in February amid allegations of past domestic abuse.

People familiar with Liddell’s approach said he is working to expand the decision-making processes put in place by Porter.

“Any attempt to make the policy-making process more streamlined and sophisticated will benefit a president who wishes to execute on pieces of his international and domestic agenda speedily but smartly,” said White House counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway.

But it’s unclear whether Liddell, a New Zealand-born former corporate executive, has enough sway with the president to successfully caution him against rash moves.

“Chris Liddell is not a policy guy,” said the former administration official. “He’s not really a Washington guy.”

Even when Porter and Hicks were in the White House, Trump ignored advice from staff and plowed ahead with his own policy prescriptions. Despite warnings from aides about the complications associated with officially declaring the opioid epidemic a national emergency, Trump did it anyway in response to a question from a reporter last year.

But the frequency of surprise policy announcements has increased, said the former White House official.

“It’s not as if things were ever perfect, but now it’s shoot from the hip,” this person said.

Half a dozen current and former administration officials relayed recent instances where they were caught flat-footed after Trump signaled his intention to make a major policy announcement.

When news reports first emerged that Trump planned to imminently announce steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, even senior aides working on trade policy were in the dark, according to two administration officials. While most everybody on Trump’s team knew he wanted the tariffs, few expected them to be unveiled so quickly, and key legal analysis had not yet been completed.

Trump’s subsequent decision in early April to impose an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports caught both Kudlow and White House legislative affairs director Marc Short by surprise, according to one administration official.

And even though Trump had flirted with rejoining TPP before, some of Trump’s aides were caught off guard when he directed Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer last week to examine re-entering TPP. Trump distanced himself from that possibility days later.

Meanwhile, many on Trump’s team were again surprised when he said last month during a speech in Ohio that the United States would be “coming out of Syria, like, very soon.” After consulting with military officials and others in his administration, Trump agreed to a slower withdrawal from Syria, this time over several months.