The National Security Council reflects the chaos: Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser hired after Michael Flynn’s firing, inherited a council of career staff members and nervous, often unqualified Flynn loyalists. The federal agencies are effectively run by Trump “beachhead” teams, some 600 people who mostly are campaign donors, Trump employees, pals or allied politicos. Many know little about the agencies they inhabit, and they are understandably resented by career staff members.

None of this is surprising to people familiar with Mr. Trump’s managerial style, a kind of mom-and-pop approach involving a tiny knot of family members and loyalists that is poorly suited to a federal government with three million employees around the world.

A story about Mr. Trump’s management style in Politico Magazine this week makes for nerve-racking reading: As his business was going bust in the 1990s, it emerged that Mr. Trump didn’t even have a chief financial officer — his lenders forced him to appoint one. The empty desks at the Treasury Department, which is led by Steve Mnuchin, who currently has nobody on his senior leadership team, aren’t exactly an example of lessons learned. Mr. Mnuchin has had his nominees nixed because their views haven’t jibed with those of someone in the White House, or because they have criticized Mr. Trump in the past.

Other cabinet officials, including Rex Tillerson at the State Department, have encountered hurdles at the White House. Shermichael Singleton, a senior adviser to Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, may have set a record by getting fired before his boss’s first day on the job. He was booted for writing critically about Mr. Trump during the campaign. He was replaced by a Trump Organization employee Mr. Carson doesn’t know.