President Trump is mulling another shakeup less than a week after White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh suddenly abandoned her West Wing post, and this time top aide Reince Priebus is said to be on the chopping block.
Multiple sources close to the administration said Priebus has had a difficult time rebounding since last month’s healthcare debacle, for which one source said the president’s chief of staff was mostly blamed. The former Republican National Committee chairman was one of the earliest establishment figures to penetrate Trump’s inner circle.
Yet in recent days, Priebus has aligned himself with the president’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is rumored to also be in jeopardy after sparring with Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Former campaign staffers have complained for weeks that Priebus and the allies he brought from the RNC were not sufficiently committed to Trump or his agenda and several have privately blamed Priebus for a series of high-profile failures that occurred on his watch, from the slow pace of Cabinet confirmations to the implosion of negotiations over the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill.
“I don’t think it’s any secret that Reince is on the hot seat,” a GOP source told the Washington Examiner. “The fact that they’re even floating replacements makes it seem more imminent.”
Two sources close to the administration pointed to Wayne Berman, a former Bush campaign adviser, as a candidate who is currently under consideration to replace Priebus should Trump decide to shuffle his West Wing leadership.
Berman, who presently works at the Blackstone Group, most recently served as finance chair for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s failed Republican presidential bid. And he was floated as a top contender for U.S. Trade Representative during Trump’s transition, though the position was ultimately awarded to former Reagan official Robert Lighthizer.
Separately, a source close to the administration said David Urban, the campaign staffer who ran Trump’s Pennsylvania operation, has been mentioned internally as a possible candidate to replace Katie Walsh or to replace Rick Dearborn, another high-level staffer who may create a vacancy by moving into Walsh’s position.
Neither Urban nor Berman responded to requests for comment for this article.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Gary Cohn, who sits atop the National Economic Council and has sought to nudge Trump away from his economic nationalist instincts, much to the chagrin of Bannon, are also being looked at as possible replacements in the event that Priebus gets axed, Axios reported Thursday.
In an email to the Washington Examiner, a White House official cast rumors of an impending staff shakeup as categorically false.
“The report is as absurd as all of the other erroneous gossip columns that have preceded it,” the official said, referring specifically to a report by Axios, which first raised the possibility that Priebus could soon be replaced.
But sources said the emerging alliance between Bannon and Priebus bespeaks the trouble both men find themselves in as Kushner, Cohn and first daughter Ivanka continue to gain power and steer the president toward more centrist policy prescriptions.
Bannon, once thought to be Priebus’ equal and opposite West Wing rival, has emerged as one of his strongest public defenders. One of Bannon’s only public appearances since Inauguration Day was at Priebus’ side at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, and the two have conducted a series of joint interviews with reporters who have questioned the authenticity of their friendship.
Sources told the Washington Examiner that Priebus and Bannon have formed a “temporary truce” in their struggle for dominance in order to combat the rising influence of Kushner.
