"It has never existed," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman wrote in June about the hope being expressed in Washington for an imaginary person who could keep Trump in line. "... [P]eople keep cycling through, looking for ways, in the campaign and now." In June some were hoping the kindergarten-teacher-in-chief would be the First Lady; this month the talk was of retired Marine general John F. Kelly, Trump's new chief of staff. John Kelly Quickly Moves to Impose Military Discipline on White House, the New York Times proclaimed on August 3, only to be answered barely two week later by the Washington Post headline Trump's lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed.

"Who's making the decisions in the White House?" Senator John McCain asked reporters on February 14. "Is it the 31 year old?" he continued, alluding to Trump adviser Stephen Miller. "Is it Mr. Bannon? Is it the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff? I don't know." The "whole environment is one of dysfunction in the Trump administration," McCain said.

"“I’ve consulted many people in town about analogies and comparisons and nobody can come up with any," Bill Galston, former Deputy Assistant to President Clinton, now at the Brookings Institution told the Guardian. "Our seismographs are broken.... We appear to have a president who cannot distinguish chaos from order. There are amateurs doing a job that only professionals can do, and even then often not successfully."

Sebastian Gorka is a deputy assistant to the President, serving as an adviser on national security. Still unknown to many Americans, Gorka gained some notoriety recently when he was found to have worn a medal associated with Miklos Horthy to an inaugural ball. Horthy led the Hungarian government from 1920 to 1944. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, describes his government as anti-semitic, noting that it was the first government in post-World War I Europe to institute a quota on the number of Jews who could enter university. Although Horthy later resisted Hitler's more extreme measures, such as construction of ghettos, and concentration camps, he is revered by the far right Jobbik party in Hungary. The Jobbik party, which sponsored a statue of Horthy unveiled in 2013, has "stoked anti-semitism" in Hungary, "vilifying Jews and Israel in speeches in parliament," according to Reuters.

Gorka, whose specialty these days seems to be media appearances and his own celebrity, does not have the Top Secret or Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance that would normally be expected of someone leading a government unit responsible for counterterrorism intelligence. Colin Kahl, who was a national security adviser in the Obama administration, wrote recently in Foreign Policy that he was unable to confirm that Gorka had a security clearance at all.

The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, known informally as the National Security Adviser, is the chief adviser to the president on national security issues. Consistent with the pattern of appointees whose political positions or temperaments seem antithetical to the mission of the agencies or positions they've been appointed to fill,  Trump's designated National Security Adviser, Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, has been investigated for passing classified information without authorization, and has promoted conspiracy theories and fake news.

Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, Trump's nominee for the job of CIA Director, is on record asserting that so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques were "within the law and within the constitution." Pompeo made his remarks in December 2014 when California Senator Dianne Feinstein released a Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA detention and interrogation. The report documented CIA use of torture including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, "rectal rehydration," and denial of medical care.

As head of the Department of Justice the Attorney General is responsible for ensuring justice for all citizens. Trump nominee Jeff Sessions has a history of racially hostile remarks, and positions on women's rights, LBGT rights, capital punishment, and presidential authority that have been opposed by the ACLU and other civil rights organizations.

During the Reagan administration, the Senate rejected Sessions for a federal judgeship for making racist statements and falsely prosecuting black political activists in Alabama.