WHITE HOUSE SHAKEUP
Chief of staff and former RNC chairman Reince Priebus becomes latest to exit troubled Trump administration after scathing attack by new communications director,
WASHINGTON— U.S. President Donald Trump has ousted long-embattled chief of staff Reince Priebus, replacing him on Friday with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general.
Trump announced the decision on Twitter, calling Kelly a “great American and a great leader” and a “true star of my Administration.”
Priebus’s departure is another indication of the turmoil roiling a struggling administration plagued by infighting between its competing centres of influence. It leaves the White House even more firmly in the hands of people without conventional experience in politics.
Priebus, former chair of the Republican National Committee, is the second top Trump aide to depart in just a week. Press secretary Sean Spicer, who announced his resignation last Friday, had also been a senior official at the party committee.
Though the news broke on Friday afternoon, Priebus told U.S. news outlets that he “resigned privately” on Thursday, the lowest point of a tenure that was rocky from the start.
Trump’s press secretary pointedly refused to say whether the president still had confidence in Priebus. Then the New Yorker magazine released an interview in which Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, insulted Priebus at length, calling him a “paranoid schizophrenic.”
Trump has a fondness for generals. Kelly, who quickly earned his trust by attempting to salvage the flawed execution of his January travel ban policy, will now seek to impose order on the disorganized operation of a leader accustomed to improvisation.
The military is an unusual, but not unprecedented, training ground for a chief of staff. During the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon appointed Army general Alexander Haig, who later served in the same role for Gerald Ford.
Kelly served 46 years in the military, including a stint as a top commander in the Iraq War. His new challenge is also formidable.
Trump’s White House has been less formal than any in modern history, with senior aides walking in and out of the Oval Office as they please. The administration just failed to pass its flagship legislative initiative, a push to replace Obamacare. It is struggling with the growing reach of a special counsel’s probe into Trump’s campaign.
It is notably short on legislative experience, though Kelly did spend time in the 1990s as a military liaison to Congress. And none of the president’s current aides have been able to rein in the impulsive behaviour that congressional Republicans say is im- peding their agenda.
Kelly joked gently about Trump during an interview two weeks ago. When his phone rang, he said, “It might be the president, so I do want to miss the call.”
Priebus’s ouster was long in the making: he had been rumoured to be hanging by a thread since the first month of Trump’s presidency. Trump had appeared to authorize a public campaign by Scaramucci, a Wall St. financier hired a week ago, to humiliate Priebus into quitting.
Priebus still flew on Air Force One with Trump and Scaramucci to Trump’s Friday speech on Long Island. Trump tweeted the news of his ouster shortly after they landed back at a military base in Maryland. Priebus’s car then separated from the presidential motorcade as journalists snapped photos.
“I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!” Trump said on Twitter.
“I will continue to serve as a strong supporter of the President’s agenda and policies. I can’t think of a better person than General John Kelly to succeed me and I wish him God’s blessings and great success,” Priebus said in a statement.
Priebus clashed at the beginning of Trump’s term with chief strategist Steve Bannon and more recently with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s influential family members. The president himself had never seemed fond of Priebus, frequently scolding him and undermining him behind the scenes.
“I’m happy for Reince,” Republican strategist Katie Packer Beeson said on Twitter. “He is a decent man who got caught up in this mess and didn’t deserve the treatment he received.” The New York Times and other outlets reported that Trump blamed Priebus for their initial failure to get their health bill passed and for the general dysfunction others believe has been caused by the president himself. At one point, according to Politico, Trump gave Priebus an implausible deadline of July 4 to clean up the administration.
Chiefs of staff generally do not last long; the average tenure is less than two years. At just six months and a week, Priebus’s term was very brief.
Trump’s allies outside the White House, such as political operative Roger Stone and Newsmax chief executive Chris Ruddy, had been calling for Priebus’s ouster since February, when Stone said “it’s time for the little man to go.”
Priebus’s power had waned further in the subsequent months. His handpicked deputy, former RNC official Katie Walsh, was pressured out of the White House in March, and another ally, communications director Mike Dubke, quit in May after just three months. One of Scaramucci’s first acts was forcing out yet another ally, assistant press secretary Michael Short.