What’s going on? Has Trump, who once said, “I like conflict,” turned over a new leaf?

White House watchers will recall the drama and infighting of the first Trump administration. There was a constant stream of leaking, infighting, and firings that riveted the White House press corps. This time, however, things seem different. Sure, there have been some hiccups, including the quick departure of Vivek Ramaswamy from the Department of Government Efficiency. Other defenestrations have taken out Boris Epshteyn, Brian Hook, and William McGinley, who had been expected to be White House counsel. Yet even though things have not been completely drama-free, there certainly seems to be less infighting than last time.

Part of the reason for the reduced infighting may lie in the fact that we now have more clarity about who Trump is and what he wants. Last time, there were three factions that could all make the claim that they represented True Trump: the Gary Cohn Globalists, the Reince Priebus Regular Republicans, and the Bannon MAGA-ites. All were incentivized to battle because Trump was new to politics, and each group felt that its vision corresponded most closely to the president’s. This time, things are different. Trump has been on the political scene for a decade, and while there are occasional surprises from Trump, there has been less ideological confusion overall this time around.

A second change is in the form of more intense vetting. Last time, in addition to policy uncertainty, there was personnel uncertainty. In the last administration, there were Never Trumpers, Democrats, and hard-to-categorize political newcomers such as Omarosa. But this time, the personnel office, led by Sergio Gor, is carefully vetting people for loyalty, and it seems to be making a difference. Trump has also been the leader of the Republican Party for three straight cycles, which has let him put his stamp on the party, including at the personnel level.

The third and perhaps most important factor in reducing infighting in this administration has been a chief of staff who keeps things under control. Susie Wiles, whom Trump nicknamed the “Ice Maiden,” has little interest in the spotlight for herself and less interest in staffers who want it.

Wiles established a strong track record of reining in infighting during the campaign. The 2024 Trump campaign was a relatively buttoned-down operation. In managing Trump to victory, Wiles showed real skill in tamping down egos, minimizing leaking, and limiting the backstabbing. She continued with that approach during the transition when she issued a declaration in response to an internal rift over whether the administration would support H-1B visas, ordering all prospective appointees to stay off social media.

Wiles maintains a low profile, even shying away from Trump’s attempt to get her to speak on election night. Although she’s the daughter of the famed football broadcaster Pat Summerall, she does not seem particularly interested in being on camera. Her reluctance sets an important example. A lot of leaking flows from a hunger for getting better press than a rival. Wiles’s willingness to move in the shadows helps keep her out of the typical Washington scrums.

Of course, minimizing infighting in a campaign or even a transition is one thing. Doing it in an administration is much harder. Campaigns and transitions run for short, discrete periods. There is also an incentive to stay disciplined because of the high stakes involved and the fact that mistakes are a gift to one’s opponents. An administration, in contrast, is of longer duration, and different appointees can have different goals, personally and ideologically.

Wiles has been doing a good job at minimizing infighting so far, but in Washington, this is a never-ending challenge. For this reason, she should continue to focus on a couple of tried-and-true methods for minimizing White House infighting.

The first is to keep developing shared goals. In an administration, policy aims can be much more varied and sometimes in conflict. This was certainly the case with the H-1B visa dispute. There’s no doubt that the Trump administration wants to curtail illegal immigration, but members of the new administration have contrasting views on legal immigration. Wiles should focus team members on larger goals on which they agree rather than on minute policy details. And she should echo Colin Powell, who observed that the most intense disagreements have to be decided by the president. That’s what he is there for.

The second area of focus for Wiles should be on defining a clear process for how policies get debated and advanced. Process means well-defined rules about who gets to be in meetings, how many aides get walk-in privileges into the Oval Office, something she has already curtailed, and who gets to talk to the press and when. Enforcing this entails punishing or even firing staffers who violate these internal processes. In the first administration, Trump didn’t hesitate to fire people. But firings were rarely linked to rulebreaking. Firings can be a good thing if people know why the firings are taking place. In contrast, in the Biden administration, there weren’t enough firings. This created an environment in which aides felt confident they could voice their opposition to the president’s stated positions on Gaza with little fear of retribution.

The third thing that Wiles should focus on is Trump himself. Presidents can signal their disapproval of infighting, and that can help limit if not eliminate it. In contrast, if presidents have a high tolerance for fighting, that will enable it to happen more. Presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama made clear that they did not want to see conflict, so they saw less of it. Limiting conflict in itself does not make a successful administration. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan had fractious teams but successful administrations. George W. Bush had a collegial domestic policy team but a strife-ridden national security team, and the prosecution of the Iraq War suffered as a result. There was little in the press about infighting among the Biden team, but few outside his inner circle would argue that he had a successful administration. Still, a culture of conflict can be crippling, and clear and coordinated processes make it easier to build trust among aides who may be working together for the first time.

The final thing Wiles should focus on is protecting herself. One of the problems of the previous Trump administration was that there were too many chiefs of staff. Having four chiefs in one term made it hard to establish the rules, communicate who is enforcing them, and build on successes. If Wiles can make clear early on that she is here to stay, that will also go a long way to keeping infighting to a minimum and helping the second Trump administration achieve its ambitious goals for reforming Washington.

Tevi Troy, a Washington Examiner contributor, is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including Fight House: Rivalries in the White House, from Truman to Trump.