On August 27, 2026 — the same day White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt worked her final shift — one of President Donald Trump’s most closely read chroniclers delivered a blunt assessment of the mood inside the West Wing: the people who work there are looking for the door.
New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, a Trump biographer and co-author of “Regime Change,” a behind-the-scenes account of the president’s second term, told MS Now’s “State of Play” that her reporting has turned up a demoralized staff and a president who has grown short-tempered with the people around him.
“Most people have decided that they want to go do something else,” she said during the segment, which was hosted by Peter Alexander. She added a caveat, noting that the description does not fit every aide and that replacements will be brought in to fill the vacancies.
Not a Happy White House
Some of the turnover, Haberman suggested, is simply a function of the calendar. Aides have long tended to head out around midterm elections, she said, once the runway in front of them starts to look short. She also pointed out that departures this term have run far below the pace of Trump’s first four years, when the constant staff shuffling became a storyline of its own.
Even so, she said, what is unfolding now goes beyond ordinary election-year attrition. “He is lashing out a lot, which tends to happen when things are not going well,” Haberman said, adding that everyone she and her colleagues spoke with described a president out of sorts with his own team.
The White House did not engage with the substance. White House Spokesman Davis Ingle answered with a personal broadside, saying Haberman talks as though she were the president’s psychologist while, in his telling, she is fixated on Trump and leans on him to stay relevant. He called it sad to watch.
Leavitt Walks Out the Door
The month’s highest-profile departure belongs to Leavitt, 28, who worked her last day as press secretary on Thursday. She has said she is leaving to spend more time with her husband and two young children; her second child was born in May 2026. Leavitt became the youngest press secretary in history when she took the podium at 27 in January 2025.
She is returning to MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump political action committee where she previously served as spokesperson. Trump has said Leavitt will stay on as his top outside adviser and an influential Republican voice through the midterms. As of Thursday, he had not named a successor.
In her final official interview in the job, with Fox News, Leavitt said many people warned Trump she was too young for the post after she worked on his 2024 campaign, and that she remains grateful he disregarded the doubters.
Haberman said Leavitt held a level of trust from the president that most of those who filled the press secretary job in his first term never had. People close to the situation said the president rang her nonstop throughout her maternity leave and that plans for her departure had been coming together for months. One of those people said Trump did not want her to go because he trusts her and dislikes breaking in new people with limited time left in his term.
Haberman also questioned how much the vacancy ultimately matters, noting that Trump openly describes himself as his own press secretary. Someone will step up to the briefing room lectern, she said, but a briefing without information is theater.
Friction Across the Administration
Signs of internal strain have surfaced steadily. Colleagues have reportedly complained about Natalie Harp, an aide whose fervent loyalty to the president is well known; Haberman said on CNN last week that Harp is not well liked by many of the people she works alongside.
The president allegedly confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Camp David over the munitions shortages the Iran war has produced, a squeeze that could leave Washington with fewer ways to bring the fighting to a close. Trump allegedly said he felt misled about the dwindling stockpile and believed the problem had already been resolved, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump rejected the account outright on Truth Social, writing that defense companies are building more plants and factories than ever before and vowing that leakers would be hunted down and prosecuted.
The White House was also reportedly displeased that FBI Director Kash Patel turned up at a celebration with players from the triumphant US Olympic hockey team earlier this year, and officials openly discussed dismissing him. Both Patel and the White House have denied those characterizations, and Patel filed a defamation suit against The Atlantic over its reporting on his alleged difficulties in the job.
Cabinet-level exits have already reshaped the administration this year. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was ousted in March 2026 after her department’s spending came under examination and immigration agents fatally shot two protesters in Minnesota, touching off widespread outrage. Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired in April 2026 following the turmoil surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files.
With Democrats projected to reclaim the House and possibly the Senate in November, the pressure on those who stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is unlikely to ease.