TALL ORDER FOR TRUMP’S NEW CHIEF OF STAFF

▶ Retired general will need all his strength to bring discipline to squabbling White House

Donald Trump’s new chief of staff faces a tough battle to bring discipline to an unruly White House, according to Washington observers, as the president attempts to overhaul an administration prone to leaks and internal disputes.

John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, will start his new job tomorrow, replacing Reince Priebus, whose establishment credentials meant he never gelled with Mr Trump’s unconventional team.

The decision was announced on Friday night in characteristic fashion – with a tweet.

It ends months of private criticism that Mr Priebus was too weak for the job and unable to drive the president’s agenda.

In his place, the retired general – a veteran of three tours of Iraq and father of a son killed in Afghanistan – has won presidential praise for his firm hand as the head of the department of homeland security.

Mr Kelly is also a true believer. He warned of the threat of terrorists crossing America’s southern border long before Mr Trump proposed his wall, and this year backed the president’s travel ban on seven – and then six – Muslim nations.

“He is a Great American and a Great Leader,” wrote Mr Trump. “John has also done a spectacular job at homeland security. He has been a true star of my administration.”

But if his job is to impose order, then his biggest challenge might be to rein in his boss.

Mr Trump took to Twitter yesterday morning to express his frustration with his own party’s failure to pass a bill repealing ObamaCare.

“Republicans in the senate will never win if they don’t go to a 51-vote majority now,” he wrote in the sort of tirade that makes critics accuse him of not understanding how the senate works.

Mr Kelly’s supporters say he has the experience of managing big organisations and the leadership needed for the role.

Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, said the appointment was typical of Mr Trump.

“He loves generals, he loves people who rose to the top of their professions,” he said.

However, he added that a man who has spent his entire career in the armed forces may struggle to cope with Mr Trump’s chaotic management style.

Senior figures such as Steve Bannon, chief strategist, and Anthony Scaramucci, director of communications, bypass the chain of command and instead report directly to the president.

Jack Jacobs, a retired army colonel, told MSNBC that Mr Kelly’s integrity and patriotism would count for little.

“At the end of the day, Gen Kelly is either going to have to accept a diminished role as chief of staff or he’s going to be frustrated and he’s going to have to leave,” he said.

Mr Priebus’s position as an establishment insider created friction with Mr Trump’s closest advisers. He had hoped to remain in the job for a year but served 189 days, the shortest tenure in modern history.

“I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country,” wrote Mr Trump in a later tweet. “We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!”

Mr Priebus gambled his political career when he became one of a small number of senior Republicans to join Mr Trump’s band of relatives and millionaires last year.

But the end began last Friday when Mr Trump announced the appointment of Mr Scaramucci, a wealthy hedge fund manager, as director of communications despite the objections of Mr Priebus.

It meant the press operation – until then the domain of the chief of staff’s Republican apparatchiks – would fall into the hands of one of Mr Trump’s brash New York friends.

The pivotal moments came on Thursday, when Mr Scaramucci took to CNN and demanded that Mr Priebus come clean on whether he was responsible for White House leaks.

Worse followed when Ryan Lizza, a reporter with the New Yorker magazine, published details of an expletive-ridden conversation with Mr Scaramucci in which he called Mr Priebus “paranoid”.

Mr Priebus said he offered to quit on Thursday night, soon after the rant became public.

He said on CNN that the president was entitled to hit the “reset button”.