IN THE 64 years during which American presidents have appointed national security advisers, nobody had less time in the post than Donald Trump’s first pick: Michael Flynn, who left in February after just 24 brutal, scandal-filled days. In the 71 years since Harry Truman made John Steelman the first White House chief of staff, nobody except Pete Rouse—an interim choice of Barack Obama’s—had a shorter stint than Reince Priebus, who resigned last Thursday after just over six months.

Even by those standards, Anthony Scaramucci’s tenure as White House communications director was brief: he was ousted in the afternoon of July 31st, his eleventh day.

Mr Priebus’s dismissal seemed almost inevitable. He is a mild-mannered Wisconsinite unrelated to the president who rose through Republican party ranks and urged Mr Trump to drop out of the presidential race after a tape surfaced in which the then-candidate boasted that he grabbed women’s genitals. But Mr Scaramucci is much Trumpier. A nattily dressed, self-made tycoon from Long Island nicknamed “The Mooch”, he was politically inexperienced but able to vociferously defend Mr Trump on television. The president prizes personal loyalty above all; Mr Scaramucci missed the birth of his own son to accompany Mr Trump to West Virginia.

Unfortunately, he broke the cardinal rule of the Trump White House: he got more press than the boss. Less than a week into his job, Mr Scaramucci gave a profanity-heavy interview to a reporter at the New Yorker in which he accused Mr Priebus of leaking a publicly available document, threatened to “fucking kill all the leakers”, and bragged that unlike Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s nationalist chief strategist, he was “not trying to suck my own cock”. A White House statement said Mr Scaramucci left in order to give John Kelly, Mr Priebus’s replacement, “a clean slate and the ability to build his own team”; Mr Kelly, a former general and homeland-security secretary, reportedly told Mr Scaramucci of his ousting shortly after being sworn in.

Mr Kelly was brought in to impose discipline and control on a chaotic, factional, leaky White House. Getting rid of the brash but erratic Mr Scaramucci—who bragged that he reported directly to the president, rather than going through the chief of staff, as is customary—seems a sound first step. But just how much it will change things remains unclear. Mr Trump, after all, is more or less his own communications director: when he has something to say, he tweets. He is also notoriously resistant to advice.

Perhaps that will change under Mr Kelly: Mr Trump may listen to a general more readily than he did to a standard politico such as Mr Priebus. But don’t bet on it. Articles promising that Mr Trump would become more “presidential” after this event, or more disciplined after bringing in that staffer, have inevitably proved just so much fish wrap.