Once-likely replacement for Kelly won’t take job
Ayers to leave the White House at end of year; Meadows, Mulvaney floated as possible picks
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s top pick to be his next chief of staff, Nick Ayers, will not take the job and instead will leave the White House at the end of the year, reopening negotiations over who will succeed the departing John Kelly.
Four other candidates are now believed to be in the running to direct Trump’s White House, administration officials said Sunday. Ayers, a longtime operative who is currently Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said in a tweet that after departing he “will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause.”
“Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House,” he said.
Trump’s new list of potential chiefs includes Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who is also acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, according to a White House official.
Sources said Ayers would work with the super PAC set up to assist Trump’s re-election campaign.
Trump had previously spoken with Ayers about the top administration job and had settled on him as Kelly’s likely replacement, the president’s advisers said.
But Ayers, who has young children, had insisted on serving temporarily, frustrating Trump, who had wanted a replacement to stay on through 2020.
Ayers was also skeptical of taking the job based on the challenges that Kelly and his predecessor, Reince Priebus, faced in the position, and talks between the two sides broke down, according to an administration official with direct knowledge of the negotiations.
After initially agreeing that Kelly would announce his departure on Monday, Trump abruptly shifted course and announced Saturday that Kelly would leave the White House by the end of the year. The position might be filled on an interim basis, he added then.
That announcement closed out Kelly’s rocky tenure and ushered in a second straight messy chief-ofstaff handover for the president. Last year, Trump took to Twitter to announce Priebus’ departure and Kelly’s arrival while aboard Air Force One, his outgoing top administrator having just left the plane.
With House Republicans poised to return to the minority in the next Congress following their party’s midterm defeat, Meadows could find the chief of staff position an appealing one. His rise to the job would signal that Trump’s response to the November drubbing is to move further to the right, rather than toward negotiations with the ascendant Democrats.
Besides Mulvaney and Meadows, other names on Trump’s short list were not immediately known.