Turmoil at the top
WASHINGTON United States President Donald Trump’s replacement of his chief of staff has ended a tumultuous week in the West Wing with his most significant personnel change so far.
Trump revealed yesterday, on Twitter, the appointment of John Kelly, 67, the retired Marine general who had been leading the homeland security department.
Reince Priebus, who had held the job since January 20, became the shortest-serving chief of staff since the role was formalised in the 1940s.
His departure puts the future of Steve Bannon, the populist chief strategist, in doubt. He and Priebus had become allies over the six months of Trump’s presidency, hunkered down in a West Wing that has often lurched from crisis to crisis. Both have been viewed with suspicion by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a presidential adviser.
Donald Trump said on Twitter: ‘‘I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration.’’
The move capped a turbulent week during which Trump’s vow to overhaul Obamacare foundered in the Senate, Congress moved to limit his power to shape relations with Russia, and Washington looked on, agog, as his new communications chief launched an extraordinary, foul-mouthed tirade against Priebus.
Anthony Scaramucci, the new head of public relations at the White House, tore into the chief of staff in an astonishing interview on Friday, calling him a ‘‘paranoid schizophrenic’’ and predicting that he would ‘‘be asked to resign very shortly’’.
Those comments looked prophetic yesterday, though it is understood that Preibus resigned on Friday, recognising that his position had become untenable.
Scaramucci, a wealthy former financier who shares Trump’s New York roots and forthright style, had also targeted Bannon, suggesting that the populist chief strategist was using his post to advance his own agenda.
Kelly is a retired four-star general whose son was killed in combat in Afghanistan. In the military he ran the US Southern Command, which put him in charge of the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.
Blunt-spoken, he was popular with his men. In the cabinet, he has mostly been a low-profile loyalist.
Tensions also flared between the US and Russia yesterday as Moscow moved to expel American diplomats – a response to the Senate’s approval on Friday of new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The measure includes unusual limits on Trump’s power to lift the sanctions without approval from Capitol Hill.
He must now decide whether to sign the sanctions into law; choosing not to do so would run the risk of his veto being overridden by Congress.
Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the new penalties. ‘‘It is impossible to put up for ever with this boorishness toward our country,’’ he said.
Trump also suffered a stinging legislative setback as his party’s seven-year quest to overhaul Obamacare ran aground. A bill that would have kept negotiations alive was killed after three Republican senators revolted.
Washington was largely entranced, however, by the palace intrigue that continues to roil the West Wing. As head of the Republican National Committee, Priebus had managed to hold his party together through one of the wildest elections in US history.
However, he hailed from the party’s establishment wing and did not bond with the president. REUTERS
Trump never forgot how Priebus urged him to drop out of the election when a tape emerged of him boasting of being allowed to molest women because he was famous.
Earlier in the week, Trump publicly accused Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, of being ‘‘weak’’ and rebuked him for not pursuing a criminal case against his Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton.
His attacks on Sessions, an immigration hardliner, have angered some of Trump’s populist base.
The president was also rebuked by the Boy Scouts of America after parents complained that he had hijacked their annual jamboree on Tuesday by making a speech more suited to a political rally.
Trump took another knock when General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised military officers to ignore the president’s Twitter announcement this week that he was banning transgender troops. The Pentagon is waiting for the White House to provide details of what the contentious policy shift would entail. The Times