Meet Trump's new chief of staff
Reince Priebus, the establishment Republican-turned-loyalist to President Donald Trump who served as his White House chief of staff for the last six months, was pushed out in the latest convulsion in a chaos-wracked West Wing to which he had repeatedly failed to bring some semblance of order.
Convinced that Mr Priebus was not strong enough, Mr Trump has been talking about bringing in "a general" as chief of staff and chose John F. Kelly, the retired Marine four-star general serving as secretary of homeland security. But some of his advisers oppose that idea, arguing that Mr Trump needs someone more in tune with the nationalist political movement that helped propel him to the White House.
Mr Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, lost his job just hours after the president's signature drive to repeal his predecessor's health care program collapsed on the Senate floor and a day after an ugly feud with the new communications director erupted in a public airing of the deep animosities plaguing the White House.
The announcement capped a fraught 24 hours in which the president's advisers waited for a change they had long anticipated. Mr Priebus accompanied Mr Trump on Air Force One for a day trip to Long Island as his fate was being decided. Making for a tense flight, his rival, Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director who had publicly vowed to force Mr Priebus's resignation, was also on the plane and in the motorcade.
![Then President-elect Donald Trump, left, stands with Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus during an ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170731050343/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/t/k/l/a/4/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1501277105349.jpg)
In barely half a year on the job, Mr Priebus never won the full confidence of the president nor was granted the authority to impose a working organisational structure on the West Wing. Always seeming to be on the edge of oustre, Mr Priebus saw his fate finally sealed a week ago when Mr Trump hired Mr Scaramucci, an edgy Wall Street financier, over the chief of staff's objections. Mr Priebus's ally, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, resigned in protest.
More than just a personnel dispute, the disagreement suggested a broader cleavage that would lead to Mr Priebus' resignation. In tapping Mr Scaramucci, Mr Trump was turning to a wealthy New Yorker who had become part of his inner circle, and who compensated in charisma and rapport with Mr Trump and his family for what he lacked in governing experience.
Mr Priebus represented a more conventional breed of senior White House figure, chosen by the president despite a career defined by the calculations of traditional Republican Party politics, which Mr Trump regards as part of "the swamp" he was elected to drain.
Mr Priebus and Mr Spicer had told the president they believed Mr Scaramucci, a gregarious hedge fund manager and fund-raiser, lacked the political experience and organisational skills required to serve in the role of communications director. In the end, however, those warnings fell on deaf ears and further soured Mr Trump, who almost from the start suggested both publicly and privately that the job of his chief of staff was not safe.
Mr Scaramucci made clear when he was hired that he did not report to Mr Priebus but directly to the president and by Wednesday night was publicly suggesting that the chief of staff was a leaker and even threatened to seek an FBI investigation. On Thursday, he went on television and dared Mr Priebus to deny leaking and described the two of them as Cain and Abel, the biblical brothers whose rivalry results in one killing the other.
I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017
On Thursday evening, The New Yorker posted an interview with Mr Scaramucci that included a profanity-laced tirade against Mr Priebus. He called Mr Priebus a "paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac", who leaked information against him and vowed to get him fired. "He'll be asked to resign very shortly," Mr Scaramucci said.
As party chairman last year, Mr Priebus was slow to embrace Mr Trump's candidacy and the president, who sometimes called him "Reincey" in private, never let his chief of staff forget it. Mr Trump had often joked about his chief of staff's long-term loyalty, and liked reminding the people around him that Mr Priebus suggested that he consider dropping out after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape of Mr Trump's crude remarks about women were made public in October.
...and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017
I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017
The New York Times