A senior adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson was suddenly fired Wednesday, apparently because the White House discovered he had criticized President Donald Trump.

Shermichael Singleton, 26, had worked on Carson's own presidential bid in 2016 before joining the administration. In the closing weeks of the election, Singleton wrote an op-ed critical of Trump in which he blasted the then-nominee's rhetoric toward black voters as "a coded message from an era in our history that should stay in the past."

Singleton had already "answered a number of questions regarding the article and expressed remorse for the piece and support for Mr. Trump" prior to assuming his HUD position in January, the New York Times reports. But administration staff hadn't finished his background check and "this week, Mr. Trump's advisers turned up" the op-ed and some related tweets, according to the Times.

Singleton, who the Huffington Post notes is "one of the few black Republicans in the Trump administration," told the Times he could not discuss the circumstances of his abrupt firing.

Security guards reportedly escorted Carson's aide out of the HUD building Wednesday.

The decision reinforces President Trump's long-standing image as a thin-skinned manager for whom personal loyalty is at least as important as a person's qualifications for a job. A week earlier, Trump made a similar call in rescinding plans to appoint pardoned war criminal Elliott Abrams to a senior State Department post after the president discovered Abrams had criticized him online last year.

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Singleton's case is more likely to do damage. Carson is a neurosurgeon just beginning a job managing a large suite of housing policy programs. Trump's team has deprived him of a trusted staffer, apparently in order to preserve the president's ego.