Pushed or Jumping? Trump's Team Shrinks Amid a Pre-Midterm Stampede

Sacked on a Thursday, talking by the weekend. Paolo Zampolli, the longtime friend credited with first introducing Donald Trump to his future wife Melania, lost his State Department post on 15 October, and within days he was telling an Italian newspaper that his former colleagues were not simply moving on.

People were not leaving the administration, he said in a translated interview with La Repubblica, they were fleeing. The government was changing, he added, and many were heading out.

It was a rare thing: a Trump insider, freshly pushed out, describing the mood on his way through the door. And it sharpened a question circling the West Wing for weeks. Are these people being shown the door, or bolting through it before the midterms? With Zampolli, the answer looks like both at once.

His removal came hours after leaked emails surfaced showing Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau had told him to stick to the cultural diplomacy remit of his role, accusing him of straying into live diplomatic matters. By his account, Trump put it bluntly, telling him his assignment at the State Department was over and suggesting he go back into business, since he was good at it.

Pushed Out or Bolting Before the Stampede

The numbers give the anxiety a spine. By the Brookings Institution's count, 56 per cent of the senior officials who made up Trump's so-called A Team had left their posts by 30 September 2026, a little over 20 months into his second term. The tracker counts promotions and internal moves alongside sackings and resignations, a method administration officials dispute, though the exits have mounted on any reading.

The same measure sat at 29 per cent in January, so the rate has nearly doubled in under nine months. Trump's first term, which set the modern benchmark for churn, ran higher still at a comparable stage, so heavy turnover is familiar ground for him.

The backdrop is grim. Trump's approval has sunk to about 37.5 per cent against disapproval near 60 per cent, by the Silver Bulletin polling average, and forecasters make Democrats clear favourites to take the House next month, with the Senate rated a toss-up.

Read case by case, the past fortnight looks less like routine churn. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece and a fixture of Trump's inner circle, announced her resignation on Tuesday 13 October after the White House publicly called for it, confirmed at a briefing that day by the then press secretary, Katie Zacharia.

The allegations against her, aired in press reports, include claims that she sought to have Trump donor Eric Deters settle a $100,000 (about £75,000) credit card bill in July 2025, while she was awaiting Senate confirmation. Guilfoyle rejects all of it.

'These allegations are false,' she wrote on X, vowing to defend her name, reputation, and integrity. Her lawyers say it is Deters who owes her about $150,000 (about £112,500) in unpaid speaking and consulting fees. Deters has said he will sue Guilfoyle and her lawyers for defamation.

Kristi Noem, the former Homeland Security secretary fired in March, was confirmed on 15 October to have left her special envoy role, which the State Department said had expired in September. She remains a senior adviser to Landau on the same Shield of the Americas brief.

Loyalty Tested as the Stampede Reaches the Top

Zacharia herself did not last the week. She was reported to be leaving on Friday, 16 October, five days into the job and after a single briefing, having drawn a torrent of questions over her credentials and whether she was entitled to call herself a lawyer, having failed the California bar exam and never retaken it. The White House had not formally confirmed her exit, and Trump said he had suggested she reconsider.

The unease then climbed the ladder. Politico reported that Trump had canvassed allies about Susie Wiles, his chief of staff and the first woman to hold the post, and weighed possible replacements. He moved fast to kill it. Wiles has his 'COMPLETE confidence', he said in a statement, and he told CNN there was 'zero chance' he would replace her, calling the report fake.

Whether flight or housekeeping, Zampolli expects more to follow. Discussions, he claimed, were already underway about others in informal or irregular roles, naming Richard Grenell, Massad Boulos, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff. None of the four has commented. Asked whether he held embarrassing secrets of his own, he declined the bait, saying only that such things tend to come out on their own.