How to get fired by Trump and still get your job back

Photo: AP Images

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wo months ago, during an interview with Jared Isaacman ahead of my trip to Musk’s town of Starbase, Texas, the subject of his aborted NASA nomination came up. It was early September; the wound was still fresh, the headlines recent enough to sting. At one point, I told him to enjoy the downtime while it lasted, assuring him that eventually, Trump would give him another shot.

Isaacman smiled politely but didn’t share my optimism.

“I consider that low probability,” the entrepreneur astronaut said, before adding with a shrug, “but I guess we’ll see.”

Turns out, we saw. The “low probability” outcome has just been reclassified as “inevitable,” because last week, Donald J. Trump re-nominated Jared Isaacman to head NASA, the same role he’d rescinded from him six months earlier.

The question is, why do some people who fall from grace manage to land on their feet, while others land on a Truth Social rant? Trump’s personnel file is full of personal comeback stories and cautionary tales, a cosmos where loyalty, silence, and timing decide who gets a second orbit.

Actually, before we talk second chances, let’s talk first chances. Keeping your Trump-approved job boils down to whether you can execute it in a way that Trump would approve, without creating the kind of noise that forces him to notice you. Make the boss look good, deliver results that reinforce the image, and above all, don’t make him waste time managing your existence.

The challenge is, Trump’s capital isn’t money or manpower, it’s attention. And it’s in short supply. There’s only so much of it to go around, and he guards it like oxygen in a sealed capsule. If you burn too much of it on yourself, you’re draining from the mission. Many crave more of it than they can handle and some will even fight to the death.

Now, if you can generate attention for him, you’re an asset. If you generate attention away from him, you’re a liability. That’s the difference between being a distant star in the Trump constellation and a star sharing a stage and stealing the light. In Trump’s world, competence is measured first and foremost by friction coefficients. The less turbulence you cause, the longer you stay in orbit.

But here’s the catch: Trump doesn’t mind chaos; he just insists on owning it. The real metric isn’t drama; it’s ownership of drama. If Trump starts it, it’s strategy. If you start it, unless you’re lucky, it’s insubordination. His tolerance for mess is infinite, so long as he’s the one making it.

Should you find yourself at the receiving end of some Trump-manufactured drama, it’s your responsibility to defuse; refuse and you’re liable to be blamed for it. And should you find yourself on the receiving end of a Trump-manufactured tempest, your job isn’t to fight it, it’s to absorb it. Defuse the storm quietly, or risk being accused of causing it.

Now, while Trump may claim creative rights to the phrase “You’re fired!” he’d rather someone else do it. It’s not the firing he enjoys, it’s the finality of a headache disappearing. So, if two staffers end up on opposite sides of a feud, Trump’s instinct is to let one side pull rank and eliminate the other, hoping the issue self-resolves without his direct intervention. We saw this a lot in his first term. But the moment that firing causes more noise than it quells, the first guy’s job becomes collateral as well. We saw a lot of this, too, in his first term.

But when Trump is the one who picks a fight, it rarely remains a one-on-one. We’re talking mutually assured unemployment. Deputies, aides, even the guy who once shared an Uber are liable to end up on the endangered species list.

Isaacman learned that firsthand when a Trump-Musk flare-up sent his nomination, which had originally been endorsed by Musk, spiraling back to Earth.  And then, after a thawing out between Trump and Musk, Isaacman was still grounded, leading him to the conclusion that he was permanently relegated to the other side of a burnt bridge.

Yet, exile isn’t always terminal. Just because the boss gave you the boot, doesn’t meant it’ll always be at your neck. It’s about how well you balance once you’re outside the gravitational pull. Can you go down quietly without going unnoticed entirely? Can you disappear strategically enough to remain relevant when the president’s radar sweeps back your way? In the case of Isaacman, the answers were yes and yes, and in that order.

Trump’s second chances aren’t about forgiveness, they’re about function. When the dust settles and the headlines fade, he looks for those who stayed useful, as they are the ones who’ve already proved they won’t explode on impact.

Jared Isaacman, it turns out, mastered that attitude, though during our interview he was too humble to acknowledge it. When his first nomination was abruptly yanked in May, he didn’t launch a PR counteroffensive, didn’t tweet, didn’t leak. He simply went quiet. He returned to his cockpit, returned to his day job and let the noise fade. At the same time, he didn’t drop off the radar screen altogether. He still gave interviews, but focused his attention on his vision for NASA and what he hoped his successor would prioritize and how it fit with the best interests of the country.

That’s the real story here. Isaacman survived the Trump orbit test. He never publicly contradicted the President, never questioned the withdrawal, and never tried to steal attention. He allowed Trump’s version of events to stand unchallenged, a rare act of damage control via self-control. And in doing so, he demonstrated the one trait Trump values more than loyalty: recoverability. The ability to fall out of favor without making it personal. To vanish without vanishing.

Meanwhile, for every Jared Isaacman who learns to float, there are two dozen John Boltons who insist on fighting gravity by tossing boulders directly at it. After being dismissed as National Security Advisor in Trump’s first term, Bolton wrote a book, The Room Where It Happened, where he reimagined himself as the hero who could do no wrong unless it was entirely someone else’s fault. Well, if he were a quarter as smart as he wrote himself out to be, he’d have realized that The Room Where It Happened might land him a sequel into The Cell Where He Happened to End Up. The Justice Department’s attempt to block the book’s release on grounds that it exposed classified information should have been a clue. But Bolton was too intent on outshining the sun to notice he was melting his own wings.

In a room full of bombastic Boltons, it’s the humble Isaacmans who make the biggest splash. Isaacman didn’t need to know Trump personally to figure this out. Which is precisely why he’s better qualified than the countless veterans of Trumpworld who still haven’t learned this lesson.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1086)