WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will leave his job at the end of the year, U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday, extending the historically high turnover in the top ranks of his administration.
Trump, speaking to reporters as he left the White House to attend the annual football game between the Army and Navy military academies in Philadelphia, said he would name a successor for Kelly, possibly on an interim basis, in the next day or two.
“He’s a great guy,” Trump said of Kelly, who led the Department of Homeland Security before taking over as Trump’s chief of staff. “I appreciate his service very much.”
Trump has been in discussions for months with Nick Ayers, a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, about becoming his chief of staff, a White House official told Reuters. The president wants Ayers to do the job for two years, but Ayers is unable to make the commitment because of his family, including two young children, and has agreed to serve only until the spring of 2019, the official said.
“The president and Nick are still working on the specific terms of him taking over,” said the official, adding that Ayers was eyeing a return to Georgia and had been planning to leave Pence’s office and the White House this month. Ayers has advised a number of high profile Republican governors and would bring a political edge to the president’s inner circle that was not integral to Kelly’s background.
A freewheeling former businessman, Trump brought Kelly in last year to restore order to his often chaotic White House, but has clashed repeatedly with the retired Marine Corps general in recent months. The two men were no longer on speaking terms, according to one source with direct knowledge of the situation.
Paul Ryan, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, said Kelly was leaving what is “often a thankless job.”
Kelly’s impending departure is part of a broad overhaul designed to recalibrate Trump’s administration as it faces a new reality in Washington, with Democrats set to take control of the House in January and the 2020 presidential race gearing up next year.
On Friday, Trump announced his choice of William Barr, who was attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush in the 1990s, to return to the job as the head of the Justice Department.
He also picked Heather Nauert, spokeswoman at the State Department and a former Fox News presenter, to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Kelly, 68, had some success in restoring order to Trump’s White House after he was appointed in July 2017, but the president bristled at his style.
Their rocky relationship was highlighted in “Fear: Trump in the White House,” a book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that was released in September.
In it, Kelly was shown as one of several White House figures questioning Trump’s abilities and was quoted as calling the president “unhinged” and “an idiot.”
