The reason I resigned is — the president won for a reason. The bumper sticker for that reason is MAGA — Make America Great Again. It was a very simple platform: Build the wall, fix the economy, defeat the jihadists.

In the last few months it became apparent to me, to Steve, to members of the original MAGA team, that people who had nothing to do with the Make America Great Again agenda were rising in influence inside the building and were shutting out and boxing out people who had been identified as [the] heart and soul of the original platform. So Steve left. That was his decision. When I saw the text of the speech the president had been given to give on Afghanistan, that was the catalyst. When I heard one of the most important national security speeches of the new presidency not make one mention of the phrase radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism, I realized that I cannot effectively do my work as a government official when these are the constraints inside the building.

But let me assure your readers: The current state of affairs inside the West Wing is, as far as I’m concerned, a temporary state of affairs.