Donald Trump is a fiercely loyal boss right up until he fires you

A review of the billionaire’s tumultuous, decades-long career — including interviews with former employees, aides, and confidantes — suggests that Trump’s dedication to even his closest allies can wear thin, particularly at moments of professional crisis. Far from a tight-knit family of blood brothers, The Donald’s inner-circle has been purged and repopulated many times over the years. Devoted workaholics burn out and flame out. Longtime alliances end with lawsuits and tabloid sniping. Sometimes reconciliation follows, sometimes grudges endure — and rarely does Trump refuse to bury the hatchet when it’s good for the bottom line…

You don’t have to reach too far back for an example of Trump abandoning a faithful staffer. Just last summer, his nascent campaign fired Sam Nunberg — a young New York operative who had spent years working as Trump’s political adviser — after Business Insider published old racist Facebook posts he had written.

In a recent interview, Nunberg said he pled with his boss not to fire him. Trump had actually cut him loose once before, in 2014, after Nunberg arranged for him to be interviewed by BuzzFeed News, and the resulting profile displeased the billionaire. In that case, Nunberg said, he had chosen to “fall on his sword” to help Trump save face — and he was rehired the next year. This time, he believed Lewandowski had personally leaked the Facebook posts in an effort to oust him. (The campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but Lewandowski has denied this.)

Nunberg now notes that even though Al Sharpton found it in his heart to forgive him for the racist posts, his longtime boss was less generous. And while he ultimately accepted Trump’s decision, Nunberg was hurt when the campaign announced his termination with a press release that called him a “low-level, part-time consultant.”