Trump’s chief of staff to depart at year’s end
Pence aide floated as Kelly’s successor
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that his chief of staff, John Kelly, will step down by the end of the year, the latest move in a long-planned staff shake-up.
The departure of Kelly, who had taken the job last year to impose order in the West Wing, had been rumored for months. Trump announced it to reporters before departing for the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. He said a replacement will be named in the next day or two.
“John Kelly will be leaving — I don’t know if I can say ‘retiring,’” the president said. “But he’s a great guy. John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year.”
Known in the West Wing as “the chief” or “the general,” the retired Marine Corps four-star general was tapped by Trump in July 2017 after serving as secretary of the Homeland Security Department. The appointment was seen as an attempt to normalize a White House riven by infighting and competing
power bases.
“He was a force for order, clarity and good sense,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “He is departing what is often a thankless job, but John Kelly has my eternal gratitude.”
Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, is Trump’s top choice to replace Kelly, and the two have held discussions for months about the job, a White House official said.
Ayers, 36, who has young children and wants to return home to Georgia with his family, has so far agreed to serve only on an interim basis through the spring. Trump, who does not want more turnover, is pressing Ayers to agree to a longer-term stay, those familiar with the discussions said.
White House aides said Trump has developed confidence in Ayers, in part by watching the effectiveness of Pence’s largely independent political operation. Ayers also earned the backing of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law who serve as senior advisers, White House officials said.
The Georgia native’s rise in GOP politics included a stint at the Republican Governors Association, time as campaign manager for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s failed White House bid and consultant work for dozens of high-profile Republicans, including Pence.
If selected, Ayers, 36, would be the youngest chief of staff since 34-year-old Hamilton Jordan served under Jimmy Carter.
If the president ultimately turns to another candidate, potential choices include Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; the White House’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney; and the U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer.
The announcement of Kelly’s departure comes as the White House braces for the final stages of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, including a report detailing his findings on questions of collusion and obstruction of justice. The president also faces oversight investigations into his administration from Democrats after they take control of the House next month.
As he confronts this reality, Trump is carrying out the staff shake-up that he had been considering for months. On Friday, Trump announced his pick for attorney general, William Barr, an advocate of strong presidential powers, and told reporters he had settled on Heather Nauert, a former Fox & Friends host and most recently the State Department spokesman, as his nominee for U.N. ambassador.
Some former administration officials said that while Trump is eager for Ayers to join that list, they feared that Ayers would feed Trump’s predisposition to focus more on politics, imperiling any chance of advancing bipartisan legislation.
Other advisers said the move would be helpful to the president, exactly because Ayers would play to his instincts. “Every president at natural inflection points makes significant changes in their administration,” said Corey Lewandowski, an informal adviser to Trump. “The president relied on information and people he didn’t know to staff the administration. Now, he’s gone back to people he knows. They’re on his team, and that’s what is needed.”
But Ayers is seen as a divisive figure in the Trump orbit. When it became clear that Trump was leaning toward Ayers to replace Kelly, several top aides told the president that they took issue with it and that it could lead to a staff exodus.
If Ayers accepts the job, his appointment would be seen inside the White House as a coup for Ivanka Trump and Kushner, who clashed with Kelly. The view inside is that they are now “running the building,” one of the president’s allies said.
Kelly had long complained that Ivanka Trump and Kushner, both top advisers to the president, were “playing government,” sources said. He had repeatedly tried to limit their influence amid complaints from others in the West Wing that they did not operate within the system.
Kelly, who did not go to work Friday, met with Trump that evening in the White House residence, just before a senior staff dinner, to hash out the details of his departure, according to people familiar with the meeting. Pence and Ayers also attended.
In the residence Friday night, the president and Kelly were said to have agreed that the departing chief of staff would break his own news Monday, announcing his exit to senior White House staff members. But Trump ultimately broke the news himself Saturday afternoon.
Kelly had been credited with imposing order on a chaotic West Wing after his arrival in June 2017 from his post as homeland security secretary. But he had also alienated some longtime Trump allies, and he grew increasingly isolated, with an increasingly diminished role.
Kelly had early successes, including ending an opendoor Oval Office policy that had been compared to New York’s Grand Central Station and instituting a more rigorous policy process to try to prevent staff members from going directly to Trump.
But those efforts were said to have miffed the president and some of his most influential outside allies, who had grown accustomed to unimpeded access.
Trump and Kelly have had arguments in the West Wing, with Kelly sometimes leaving for the day after battling with Trump. “I’m outta here,” Kelly has been heard to say, leaving others wondering whether he would return.
The chief of staff has told others in the White House that Trump is ignorant of the workings of much of the government — including military operations, immigration laws and Congress — and that he is obsessed with his news coverage.
Still, the president did not diminish Kelly as he prepares to leave the White House, as he has done in other firings, and has no plans to humiliate Kelly, officials said. Current and former officials said Trump continues to respect Kelly, no matter how often the two men clashed.
Trump had often tossed around potential replacements, but sensitive to accusations that his administration has been marked by record turnover, he said in July that he would keep Kelly in the job through 2020.
Information for this article was contributed by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; by Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin, Michele Salcedo and Catherine Lucey of The Associated Press; and by Josh Dawsey, Seung Min Kim and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post.