| Trump ousts Priebus as chief of staff |
| With his agenda stalled, President Trump became convinced that Reince Priebus was a “weak” leader and had been lobbied intensely by rival advisers to remove the establishment-aligned Republican, who has long had friction with Trump loyalists, according to White House officials. Trump tapped Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly as the new chief of staff. |
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| John Kelly listens as Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting yesterday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) |
Priebus's departure is a sign that if Trump believes his presidency is a mess, he thinks his ties to the Republican establishment aren't helping. Priebus was the definition of the establishment. So was former press secretary Sean Spicer (remember him?). In their places are a retired Marine general who has a militaristic view on Islamic terrorism and immigration and a communications director who is musing about firing or “killing” leakers. He has become one of Trump’s favorite members of his Cabinet .... In his tweet, Trump called Kelly the “true star” of his administration. [Vox / Dara Lind]
“As a former White House chief of staff, the best advice I could have given [Kelly] has been overtaken by events: Don’t take the job,” quips John Podesta, who held top positions in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, in an op-ed for today’s paper. “Kelly, who has rendered extraordinary service and sacrifice to the nation, just signed up for what may truly be an impossible mission … To have any chance of succeeding, he will have to accomplish...extraordinary tasks, all at odds with President Trump’s instincts. First, discipline. … Kelly’s second task will be to restore strategic direction to Trump’s haphazard policy-making process.
“The truth is that the president needs Kelly more than Kelly needs him,” argues Podesta, who was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “Trump simply cannot afford to have Kelly walk without disastrous consequences. The new chief of staff should use that power to restore discipline and dignity to a White House sorely in need of both.”
-- “In his 40 years in the military, Kelly developed a reputation for bluntness that won him the respect of his fellow Marines and sometimes grated on senior officials in the Obama administration,” Greg Jaffe and Andrew deGrandpre wrote in a profile over the weekend. “He is best known in Washington as an experienced battlefield commander who led U.S. troops in Iraq and lost a son in Afghanistan in 2010 to a Taliban bomb. But the most relevant experience he will bring to the chief of staff job is a tour as senior military adviser to Defense Secretaries Robert M. Gates and Leon E. Panetta in the Pentagon. The job demanded Kelly act as a disciplinarian, pressing to make sure the military service chiefs and the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy were executing the defense secretary’s agenda …
“As a four-star general, Kelly was frequently at odds with the Obama White House. He spoke out forcefully on issues including Obama’s plan to shutter the prison complex in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the perceived vulnerability of America’s borders. At a time when the Obama administration was trying to wind down America’s wars and calm fears of a terrorist attack, Kelly often spoke of the threat posed by groups like the Taliban in dire terms. … In charge of U.S. Southern Command, Kelly oversaw the military detention center at (Gitmo). His weekly updates on the prison, which were blasted out to dozens of White House and Pentagon officials, became well known for their candor. ‘His vernacular wasn’t the typical government prose,’ said one former White House official. ‘He would call out some of the military commission judges, saying that they had no idea what they were doing.’”
-- “The president gave Mr. Priebus many of the same assurances of control, and then proceeded to undercut and ignore him — to the point where Mr. Priebus often positioned himself at the door of the Oval Office to find out whom the president was talking to,” Michael Shear, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman note on the front page of today’s New York Times. “ … Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner had hoped to persuade Mr. Trump to appoint Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser, as chief of staff. Mr. Trump, who likes Ms. Powell, considered doing so…
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