Donald Trump appears to be lining up a replacement White House senior staff already
To say that things have been going poorly thus far inside Donald Trump’s White House would be an understatement. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has created so many detractors on his staff that they seem to be in a race to leak negative things about him. Sean Spicer has no idea what he’s doing. Kellyanne Conway is an ongoing embarrassment. And now Trump’s recent meetings suggest he’s already lining up a replacement senior staff.
It’s not uncommon for Donald Trump to maintain tangential connections to his political advisers even after they quit or he fires them. For instance it’s still not clear at what points on the calendar Trump’s friend Roger Stone was or was not a Trump campaign adviser. And it’s been documented that Trump continued paying Corey Lewandowski as a consultant even after he “fired” him as campaign manager. But take a look at the list of former campaign advisers whom Trump is suddenly bringing to the White House to meet with him.
Donald Trump has privately held White House meetings with Lewandowski, former campaign adviser David Bossie, and former campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson all within the past week, according to this tweet from the Washington Post’s Robert Costa. And not long ago, Trump brought former transition team leader Chris Christie to the White House as well, although there was no attempt at keeping that meeting from the public.
These are just the recent meetings that the media has gotten wind of; there may be more we don’t know about. There has long been speculation that if Donald Trump is forced to dump his current White House senior staff due to their ongoing inability to make heads or tails of his erratic nature, he’ll merely turn back to the people he relied on previously, because it’s how just how Trump does things. Corey Lewandowski has resigned from CNN and appears to be waiting for Trump to rehire him. Christie has been careful to remain on Trump’s good side, even as he publicly bashes Trump’s staff. Pierson keeps hanging around, publicly acting on Twitter as if she’s still on Team Trump, even though she never was given a White House job.
These people sure are acting like they’ve been told by Trump that they just need to wait until enough time has passed so he can dump his existing failed staff without it looking like a panic move. And now Trump is suddenly bringing them to the White House for private meetings in rapid fashion. But is he stringing them along by making them think he’ll hire them before much longer, or is he stringing his current staff along by making them think they’ll get to keep their jobs? Either way, half the people in Trump’s circle are about to get screwed.
