Trump unleashed his Mini-Me pit bull Anthony Scaramucci to maul Priebus, and The Mooch cast himself as Cain to Priebus’s Abel, eviscerating him in a lewd rant to, of all places, The New Yorker. Then Trump delivered the coup de graceless Friday evening, tweeting from Air Force One as Priebus deplaned that he was replacing the chief of staff with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

Trump had always resented Priebus for advising him to get out of the race after the Billy Bush “Access Hollywood” tape story broke — known as Priebus’s “scarlet A.H.,” according to The Washington Post — and for not understanding that Trump is not a mere Republican; he’s the head of his own “beautiful,” us-against-them movement, “the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Priebus wasn’t “an original,” as early Trump loyalists are known, or a populist. But he was Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin BFF, which made Trump doubt where his chief of staff’s loyalties lay when it came to Congress. And Trump and the Mooch had fingered Priebus as a leaker, which bugs them, even though they themselves are leakers extraordinaire.

As The Post reports, Trump’s delighted demeaning of Priebus included this incident: “At one point, during a meeting in the Oval Office, a fly began buzzing overhead, distracting the president. As the fly continued to circle, Trump summoned his chief of staff and tasked him with killing the insect.”

After torturing Reince for months, Trump happily gave him the final humiliating shove. As the tweets hit the White House cellphones, Priebus’s colleagues Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino jumped out of the Suburban they were sharing with Priebus, leaving the jobless man in a driving rain on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, the weakest link tossed off the sled for the press wolves.

You’re a killer and a king or a loser, as Fred Trump liked to say. And anyone who doesn’t understand that Trump is more important than the G.O.P. or the institution of the presidency is, in his mind, a loser. Anyone who doesn’t get that the loyalty should be for him personally, rather than the country, is, to Trump, a loser.

Trump is trapped in a caricature of masculinity that corrodes his judgment. As red meat for his base, he tweeted that after consulting his generals he was banning transgenders from the military. But his defense secretary, James Mattis, and generals quickly pushed back on the idea.