John Kelly, chief of staff to the US president, will be leaving by the end of this month in a continuing churn of White House personnel that has already reached levels unparalleled by any previous administration at this stage of the presidency.
President Trump announced Kelly’s departure to reporters at an interaction before leaving town, confirming speculation that raged and waned for months but had approached a sense of finality in the last some days.
“John Kelly will be leaving – I don’t know if I can say retiring,” Trump said he will will be leaving at the end of the year. We’ll be announcing who will be taking John’s place”
Nicky Ayers, currently chief of staff to Vice-President Mike Pence, leads the speculation race, with the reported backing of Trump’s daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who are said to have been chiefly responsible for Kelly’s ouster. The outgoing chief of staff had sought to regulate their access to the president as he had sought to bring discipline to a chaotic White House.
Kelly is Trump’s second chief of staff, hauled over from the department of homeland security to replace Reince Priebus, a top Republican party official who had never quite gained the president’s trust and respect and found himself outmaneuvered in the court intrigues and bitter fights between top aides that marked the first months of Trump’s tenure.
Departures from the White house started within weeks of the president’s inauguration in January 2017, and have shown no sings of a let up. Recent high-profile exits include ambassador to UN Nikki Haley, attorney general Jeff Sessions and now Kelly, from a position that is said to be the gatekeeper to the Oval Office and president.
“President Trump is breaking records,” said an October analysis by Brookings, a top US think tank, of departures from top positions in the Trump administration. “Ten (or 83 percent) of the most senior-ranking White House advisers have departed, sparking a cascade of turnover in the junior ranks as well.”
As this stage of the presidency, two years under the belt, President Ronald Reagan (who was in office from 1981 to 1989) had 59% turnover; George H W Bush (commonly known now as Buch I) had an incredibly low 17% turnover — his loyalty to his staff and their’s to him was on display amply past week during his state funeral.
Bill Clinton, a Democrat who was president from 1993 to 2001, had exited over half his staff by then, 58%.
Bush Junior, George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, was as circumspect about his hires as his father and was just a loyal to them — 17% turnover. And, President Barack Obama, who held the White House from 2008 to 2016, scored 41%attrition rate — not clear if it was the average at the end of his two years in office or at the ned of the four-year mark.
First Published: Dec 09, 2018 12:12 IST
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