The White House is about to get a whole lot meaner. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has started cleaning house, shedding his chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer. Jeff Sessions, his attorney-general, seems at risk of getting pink-slipped. But just as important as the personnel purge is the way it's being done, with priority given to muscular bullying and maximal cruelty. We're getting closer to a purely Trump White House – and that spells real trouble, not only for the administration but for Trump himself.

Nothing exemplifies the administration's growing cruelty more than the new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci. He comes straight from central casting, a caricature of the 1980s greed-is-good Wall Street slickster. In a now-infamous conversation with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci unleashed a stream of vulgarities, threats and bluster against fellow members of the administration. Trump loved it.

That should come as no surprise. On the campaign trail and now in office, Trump has shown an inclination for crudeness and roughness. And in recent weeks, particularly since his son Donald jnr became entangled in the Russia investigation, Trump has indulged his core cruelty much more freely.

In particular, Trump has singled out Sessions for public bullying, viciously attacking the attorney-general as though he were an outside political opponent, not a key member of the administration. On Twitter, where Trump has been especially active since Spicer's resignation, Trump has labelled Sessions "weak" and "beleaguered", And in an interview with the New York Times, he railed against Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, making clear that he regrets asking Sessions to join the administration (while at the same time refusing to fire him).