The very stable genius in the Oval Office will not be reading the Democrats’ memo in response to Devin Nunes’ now-legendary epistle, according to Chief of Staff John Kelly, because “it’s quite lengthy,” being ten pages long. Wow, a whole ten pages. Maybe it doesn’t have all the good words, ya spose? And it probably doesn’t have pictures, either.
So Kelly will brief Trump on this tome that the Democrats submitted. Meanwhile, Kelly has problems of his own. Trump is feeling the heat of Trump-Russia and he’s been saying for some time now, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He wants “a killer” to protect him, and Kelly’s not it. Ivanka is thinking about cleaning house. Gabriel Sherman, Vanity Fair:
These people say the president is increasingly frustrated that members of his administration aren’t going to war for him, and he’s being encouraged by his daughter Ivanka to bring in new blood. “The president’s view is that allies on the outside are doing a better job defending him than his political shop,” one Republican close to the White House told me. Another outside adviser who regularly speaks with Trump said that the president is regretting some of his Cabinet choices. “He’s saying he should have put Rudy [Giuliani] at State and Chris Christie at Justice.”
Trump has recently told advisers he wants a “killer” to steer the White House’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation and craft a midterm election message for him to stump on this fall. For Trump, there’s a growing urgency to fill the role. His efforts to stymie Mueller’s probe have so far failed, and the specter of impeachment looms if Democrats win back the House in November. Ivanka, who’s been frustrated with Chief of Staff John Kelly, has told her father that he needs people around him that will put his interests above their own. “She wants to clean house,” a Trump friend told me. “Her view is J.F.K. had Bobby there to have his back.”
When Kelly came in he got rid of Steve Bannon and then he was responsible for the short lived Scaramucci. Apparently these steps are now being reconsidered. Jason Miller is a Trump alum and he’s being considered by Ivanka to replace Kelly because he’s “a killer” and won’t “keep him in the dark,” which is Trump’s other complaint about Kelly.
In Miller, Trump sees an aggressive operator who could potentially fill a vacuum created last August by the departure of former chief strategist Steve Bannon. [...] In recent weeks, Trump has publicly clashed with Chief of Staff John Kelly after Kelly took a more active role in White House policymaking and messaging. One Republican close to the White House described Trump’s frustration with Kelly, who came to the office with zero political experience, this way: “It’s like Kelly views Trump as a mushroom. He wants to keep him in the dark and feed him a bunch of shit.”
Hey, Sean Hannity can’t do all the heavy lifting by himself, now can he?