MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “According to Collins and Zeleny, the fight — which Trump witnessed the start of (and sided with the more hard-line Bolton) — led some aides to speculate that one of the two combatants might leave the White House following it. (The betting money is on Kelly, who is not only on the wrong side of Trump in this fight but, more generally, has been seen as likely on his way out of the job for months now.) White House press secretary Sarah Sanders downplayed the fight in a statement later Thursday [10-18-18], insisting that her colleagues are ‘not angry at one another’…The tendency when reading a story of infighting in the White House is to assume that this sort of thing might irk the President. After all, internal dissension would, theoretically, be the sort of thing that would bother a president — particularly given that it leaked to the media. This is, of course, not a normal White House or a normal president. And this President doesn’t mind fighting among his aides. In fact, he encourages it.”
–Chris Cillizza, “Why Donald Trump likes it when John Kelly and John Bolton fight,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 18, 2018 6:20 pm