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Trump's staffing upheavals come in spurts

Things seem to happen in spurts. Reince Priebus resigned on July 28, but the cards really started to fall a week and a half earlier.

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Analysis by Sam Petulla (CNN)
(CNN) — Things seem to happen in spurts. Reince Priebus resigned on July 28, but the cards really started to fall a week and a half earlier.

On July 19, Walter Shaub, the Director of the Office of Government Ethics, resigned. The next day Mark Corallo, a spokesperson for President Donald Trump's legal team, resigned. The next day it was Sean Spicer and Rich Higgins. Then two more people left, one fired, within a week. Six departures from Trump's administration and orbit in under 10 days, largely centered around the tumult caused by the hiring and quick firing of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.

A similar trend appears to be underway right now, starting with White House communications team members Hope Hicks and Josh Raffel's announced departures (their last days are said to be TBD). As CNN's tracker of departures from the Trump administration shows, we're again in a period where successive departures are announced within a short time period, including his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Trump said this week he's getting close to having the staff he wants, implying he's not there yet.

"I'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want," he told reporters after firing Tillerson via tweet.

This doesn't mean anyone else is guaranteed to go, but if past is prologue, it could mean that more substantial fallout is coming. Recent reports have suggested it could be Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. It could be national security adviser H.R. McMaster. It could be everybody. According to reporting Friday, Trump and his chief of staff John Kelly were not simpatico after some recent frustration.

There's one other period where this level of tumult engulfed the White House: around when White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned in early February following allegations of abuse by his two ex-wives, which he denied. The week Porter resigned was a staffing mess, with an attorney and speechwriter resigning shortly after and several other people leaving before.

Explore the departures from the Trump administration further with the interactive below.

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