In just over a week on July 20, White House legislative director and chief liaison to Capitol Hill Marc Short will say sayonara to Donald Trump's beleaguered West Wing. The Trump taint doesn't appear to be following Short out the door the way it has so many other Trump alums—he’s landed a position at the consulting firm Guidepost Strategies and will also be a senior fellow/teacher at University of Virginia.
But Short's exit in the midst of a critical pre-midterm legislative push to confirm Trump's second Supreme Court justice will leave the West Wing a little, well, short. Short was among the more establishment types in the White House and served as an emissary and translator between two controlling branches of the same party where a lot gets lost in translation. As a pivotal figure in both the GOP's successive failures to repeal the ACA and passage of the party's tax giveaway to the mega-rich, it's fair to say Short won some and lost some.
But in the midst of what's shaping up to a gritty confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh, the last thing you want to do is lose someone who both knows the rhythm of the Hill and how to mitigate the idiosyncrasies of the man-child in the White House. That said, major turnover is just another day at the office in Trump's West Wing.
Already, Trump has cycled through a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, four communications directors, a press secretary, a chief strategist, two national security advisers and a number of midlevel aides.