Some who have come and gone managed to benefit from the experience in their own way despite the ordeal. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary who was mocked on “Saturday Night Live” and maligned by the president and the news media, nonetheless has received lucrative speaking contracts and has a book coming out in July. Mr. Tillerson and Gary D. Cohn, the former national economics adviser, lost power struggles, but both still have hundreds of millions of dollars to console themselves, and friends say no one should feel sorry for them.

Still, former advisers like Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates have all been charged with or pleaded guilty to crimes and are looking at prison time.

Others worry they may face the same fate. Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency whose spending and security practices were spotlighted Thursday at a contentious House hearing, may yet lose his job.

Other presidents have seen associates get caught up in investigations or scandals that were highlighted or magnified because of their closeness. Plenty of advisers, aides and friends of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton met untimely ends to their political careers or even went to prison, and critics of both presidents often said they did not seem to care about the consequences to those around them.

The closer someone gets to a president, the harsher the spotlight can be. Many who seek the power and stature of the White House somehow convince themselves that their own foibles or misdeeds will not be exposed, only to learn otherwise, or become intoxicated by their new positions of influence and exercise poor judgment. And Washington can be especially unforgiving. “Here, ruining people is considered sport,” Vincent W. Foster Jr., a longtime Clinton friend and aide, wrote before killing himself in 1993.

Several people who have been close to Mr. Trump over the years say that he is exceptionally good at rationalizing his own behavior to himself, and compartmentalizing the types of personal catastrophes that would leave other people emotionally ravaged.

“I think that loyalty has always been a one-way street with Trump, and he doesn’t really care about the wreckages he engenders as long as he comes out where he wants to be,” said Tim O’Brien, a biographer who was sued by Mr. Trump over a book reporting that Mr. Trump had inflated his net worth.