To close observers of the revolving door in the West Wing, a clear pattern has emerged. After a brief honeymoon period, Donald Trump is reported to have grown frustrated with a new adviser. The president knocks down these reports as “fake news,” but their disagreements spill out into public view. Inevitably, after a series of increasingly labored denials, the adviser is shown the door. All of which invites the question: Is John Bolton, the president’s belligerent national security adviser, wearing out his welcome?

Twice during his Memorial Day trip to Japan, Trump publicly undercut Bolton—first waving off regime change in Iran, a persistent Bolton hobbyhorse, and then declaring (contra Bolton) that North Korea’s latest ballistic missile tests were no cause for alarm. According to The New York Times, the president was recently overheard at Mar-a-Lago complaining about Bolton’s more hawkish advice and wondering if he was being led around by the nose.

And yet, according to the Washington diplomats and bureaucrats who know him, it seems unlikely that Bolton will step down any time soon. Nor will the former ambassador—a veteran knife-fighter who doesn’t suffer fools—be exterminated by means of conventional office politics. “My bet is that Bolton, who is a very able, clever bureaucrat, figures he can tolerate a bit of the public presidential commentary, but by staying in the job can push many policies that he considers important,” said a former high-ranking State Department official who used to work with Bolton. “He looks at the bigger picture. He’s a difficult person but I don’t think he’s thin-skinned. Probably serves him well with this White House.”

While another administration might have choreographed a clash between the president and his top adviser, in order to push Pyongyang or Tehran to the negotiating table, Trump’s historical approach to foreign policy supports a less generous interpretation. Time and again, the president has lashed out when deputies try to substitute their expertise for his own. (“Save your energy, Rex,” Trump tweeted at former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, when he attempted to conduct his own negotiations with Kim Jong Un.) But Bolton, unlike his predecessor H.R. McMaster, has learned from experience how to navigate the corridors of power. “He has the savvy to do the sorts of things with people with whom he does not agree, but who are nonetheless his boss, and survive,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell who often sparred with Bolton in the George W. Bush administration.

Since his appointment last year, Bolton has shored up his influence by concentrating decision-making within the National Security Council and exploiting the Trump administration’s institutional deficits. “The most important ingredient in national-security decision-making [is people]. What Trump has done is injured himself by getting rid of people who would often either not do what he said to do, or would object, or do something of a combination of the two,” Wilkerson continued, referring to the defenestrations of McMaster, James Mattis, and former White House chief of staff John Kelly.

Bolton, he contends, has taken advantage of that void. “He’s a very powerful person around there, in the absence of attention to detail on the president’s part, and in the absence of anyone in the Cabinet who really knows how, and would, challenge him—he’s a pretty powerful person.”

There is also the matter of who could possibly replace Bolton—Trump’s third national security adviser in two and a half years. Across the administration, there is a dearth of qualified and willing candidates to fill departmental vacancies. But the NSC job comes with additional complications. Since joining the White House, Bolton has purged the NSC and surrounded himself with loyalists from past lives, ensuring that his departure would leave a gaping hole in the national-security apparatus.

Perhaps, some sources speculate, the volatile Bolton–Trump dynamic will stabilize. “In their own way, they’re both maximal narcissists,” said Wilkerson—both are predisposed to be uncompromising. But constant tension/turmoil “has become the new normal,” said a second high-ranking State Department official who overlapped with Bolton. “Unheard of in past administrations to have this kind of public disconnect, especially in the W.H., but, like I said, it’s become routine.”

Another former senior U.S. official proffered a more sobering assessment. “So many people in the government accept the unacceptable that I no longer can predict when a situation isn’t tenable any more.” Maybe, this person continued, “the lesson is that in the postmodern era, there are many people exercising power in many ways, and traditional power relationships aren’t really in force anymore.”