Donald Trump gets not only skewed news and information from Fox News, he is currently taking direction from Sean Hannity on how to run the government. Trump ordered 46 United States attorneys, holdovers from the Obama administration, to tender their resignations immediately on Friday, including Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, whom Trump had previously asked to stay on. This action was taken after Sean Hannity spoke on Thursday night on Fox News advocating a "purge": The New York Times reported:
Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an email that all remaining holdover United States attorneys had been asked to resign, leaving their deputy United States attorneys, who are career officials, in place in an acting capacity.
[...]
But the calls from the acting deputy attorney general arose a day after Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator who is a strong supporter of President Trump, said on his evening show that Mr. Trump needed to “purge” Obama holdovers from the federal government. Mr. Hannity portrayed them as “saboteurs” from the“deep state” who were leaking secrets to hurt Mr. Trump. It also came the same week that government watchdogs wrote to Mr. Bharara and urged him to investigate whether Mr. Trump had violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments.
And "purge” of alleged “saboteurs” is what this is. The New York Times says further:
Several Democratic members of Congress said they only heard that the United States attorneys from their states were being immediately let go shortly before the Friday afternoon statement from the Justice Department. One senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of the United States attorney in that state, said that an Obama-appointed prosecutor had been instructed to vacate the office by the end of the day.
Although it was not clear whether all were given the same instructions, that United States attorney was not the only one told to clear out by the close of business. The abrupt nature of the dismissals distinguished Mr. Trump’s mass firing from Mr. Clinton’s, because the prosecutors in 1993 were not summarily told to clear out their offices.
[...]The abrupt mass firing appeared to be a change in plans for the administration, according to a statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.“In January, I met with Vice President Pence and White House Counsel Donald McGahn and asked specifically whether all U.S. attorneys would be fired at once,” she said. “Mr. McGahn told me that the transition would be done in an orderly fashion to preserve continuity. Clearly this is not the case. I’m very concerned about the effect of this sudden and unexpected decision on federal law enforcement.”
And well Senator Feinstein should be concerned. Generally speaking, personnel replacements in a new administration are done gradually so that there can be an orderly transition and the work flow is not overly disrupted. Both Clinton and Bush replaced a lot of people at once but the moves were announced in advance and handled professionally, not like this. Political replacements are usually decided on a case by case basis, never in a wholesale purge manner like in this scenario. This is another debacle, and it's no coincidence that the target is really Barack Obama. Trump is paranoid and believes that Obama is out to get him. PoliticusUSA said this:
This is not a good development, but is is a foreseeable one. Trump has always been merely the figurehead for dark forces in American culture, as opposed to being a powerful leader in his own right with a compelling doctrine. Any message or doctrine that Trump has ever espoused has been cobbled from views expressed by somebody else and put on a teleprompter.
The real powers that be, Steve Bannon and Fox News, are molding and shaping this administration by brilliantly playing the pliable instrument that is Donald Trump. The true power brokers know exactly which notes to push, when and how hard, in order to elicit exactly the performance that they want. Trump is not only Putin's Puppet, he's Bannon's and Fox News' puppet. If you don’t think that Steve Bannon reveled at deconstructing the Justice Department yesterday you haven’t been paying attention. This is not the first incident of this nature nor the last. This is not going to end well.