White House says no staff shake-up looming
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s White House has been sharply divided by the rivalry between his powerful son-in-law and the ideologue behind Trump’s populist rise.
Senior adviser Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon, arguably the two most influential voices in the West Wing, have clashed repeatedly in recent weeks over strategy to pass health care legislation, the fallout of the bogged-down immigration ban and, most recently, whether to intervene in the Syrian civil war.
Although the White House is rife with rumors of a staff shake-up, Trump’s young administration is pushing back against reports of a pending West Wing overhaul.
Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement Friday that the narrative of a dysfunctional administration on the verge of a makeover “is a completely false story driven by people who want to distract from the success taking place in this administration.”
“The only thing we are shaking up is the way Washington operates as we push the president’s aggressive agenda forward,” she said.
Still, the administration has been plagued by the public airing of infighting. In recent weeks, tensions have mounted between Bannon and Kushner.
Bannon, the former head of the conservative news outlet Breitbart, powered Trump’s populist campaign message. But some see his role as declining. This past week, Trump removed him from the National Security Council, reversing his deci- sion to give Bannon access to the group’s high-level meetings.
Kushner, who played a major role in the presidential campaign, is heading an effort to overhaul the federal government and has traveled to Iraq with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. Kushner is allied with a group of aides who view themselves as more moderate forces — a group that Bannon’s allies have labeled the White House’s “Democrats.”
B a n n o n’s s i d e b l a mes Kushner a nd hi s f a c t i on for trying to move Trump way from some of his populist campaign promises. But Bannon has taken the brunt of the blame for the stalled travel bans and for the health care fallout.
Trump initially went along with the way the ban was rolled out, but he has since grown angry that Bannon did not craft the executive order so it could stand up in court, according to a person familiar with the president’s thinking who was not permitted to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
S p e c u l a t i o n a l s o h a s been rampant about chief of staff Reince Priebus, who has faced questions about his staying power since he started the job. That scrutiny intensified with the collapse of the House GOP health care overhaul, a major embarrassment for Trump.
Chris Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend and the head of NewsMax, said Trump thrives on internal debate but does not like “when people are leaking or criticizing to the outside.”
On whether Trump will make changes, Ruddy said he wasn’t privy to internal discussion but noted, “Donald Trump has a history of ignoring what everyone says or thinks and keeping people he likes for a long period of time.”