President Trump’s allies are increasingly concerned that they are underrepresented in his own White House, to the detriment of both the president and his party as the midterm elections approach.

“We’ve been purged,” said a former White House official. “That’s the bottom line. And the people who have stayed behind are not at all loyal to our president.”

All this has come under greater scrutiny after three specific events: the publication of Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump administration, implicitly anti-Trump remarks at the funeral of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the New York Times op-ed alleging “the Resistance” has representatives close to the White House, at the highest levels of the executive branch. But it has implications going forward as Republicans battle to maintain control of Congress.

“I consider this a coup,” said former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo. “What kind of coup? I don’t know. But it’s a kind of coup. It’s an administrative coup at the very least.”

Trump loyalists were split on reactions to the McCain funeral. Some wanted to see the president push back, even if just on Twitter, while others were relieved that he didn’t. There were staffers who had wanted Trump to be more magnanimous following the longtime Arizona senator’s death, acknowledging his heroism during the Vietnam war.

At the same time, there was a sense that the Washington elite was using recent events to slam Trump. The anonymous New York Times op-ed alleging an anti-Trump actor on the inside was a particular sore point for his supporters.

“You have to wonder about anyone who would anonymously run to the New York Times instead of gracefully parting ways from a job they find so terribly chaotic and disconcerting, and a boss they don’t respect,” said Erin Montgomery of the Trump-aligned America First Action PAC.

“It’s morally repugnant,” she added. “Last I checked, this ‘senior administration official’ didn’t win the votes of more than 62 million Americans for the highest office in the land. Donald Trump did. If this unnamed author is truly the ‘adult’ they claim to be, they will resign — out of respect for the presidency and the millions of everyday Americans who are doing better than ever thanks to President Trump’s actions and policies.”

Caputo offered a similar assessment. “It’s the most cowardly piece of writing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s scares the living daylights out of me.”

“Since the op-ed was published anonymously and in the New York Times, Trump supporters will dismiss it without batting an eyelash,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “But what is truly despicable is that the author freely admits there is an active conspiracy within the administration to thwart the president and thus the will of the people.”

The White House denounced the author as “gutless,” challenging the Times to reveal them. “Given that the author is a ‘senior official,’ and could be any one of hundreds of people, his actions are not that of a hero but that of a coward hell-bent on doing irreparable harm to this country and the safeguards put into place to protect it,” O’Connell said. “Either come forward and make yourself known or resign your post immediately. Sniping from the cheap seats is the sign of the weak.”

But many thought the bigger problem was the paucity of aides loyal to the president’s mission, especially after the ouster of Sebastian Gorka and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, leaving conventional Republicans behind.

“I spent the evening the other night with friends of mine from the Trump campaign who live in Washington, D.C.,” said a source close to the White House. “Every single one of them had been purged from the administration. None of them work in the administration today. And this has been going on for eighteen months.”

“If you wanted to narrow down a list of Never Trumpers in the Trump administration,” Caputo said, “you’d better have a reel of paper. I regret particularly that the president agreed to bring a phalanx of people into his administration who were not supporters of his campaign.”

Two sources close to the White House contrasted the current state of affairs with those in then President Bill Clinton’s administration who resigned over their disagreements with welfare reform, describing this as the more “honorable” course of action. Several Trump loyalists argued there was a sign as to who the people criticizing the administration from the outside might be.

“Look first at the departments of government that have purged all the Trump supporters from their ranks,” said Caputo. “That is a tell. Follow the smell.”