WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said Saturday that chief of staff John Kelly will leave his job by year’s end…
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said Saturday that chief of staff John Kelly will leave his job by year’s end amid an expected West Wing reshuffling reflecting a focus on the 2020 re-election campaign and the challenge of governing with Democrats reclaiming control in the House.
An announcement about Kelly’s replacement was expected in the coming days, the president told reporters as he departed the White House for the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, is Trump’s top choice to replace Kelly, and the two have held discussions for months about the job, a White House official said.
The announcement Saturday comes a day after Trump named his picks for attorney general and ambassador to the United Nations, and two senior aides shifted from the White House to Trump’s campaign.
“John Kelly will leaving—I don’t know if I can say retiring—but he’s a great guy,” Trump told reporters. “John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year. We’ll be announcing who will be taking John’s place—it might be on an interim basis. I’ll be announcing that over the next day or two, but John will be leaving at the end of the year.… I appreciate his service very much.”
Kelly had early successes, including ending an open-door Oval Office policy that had been compared to New York’s Grand Central Station and instituting a more rigorous policy process to try to prevent staffers from going directly to Trump.
