According to the Washington Post’s unnamed sources, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus may be on his way out.
According to on-the-record statements given to the Washington Post, the opposite is true.
Citing two unnamed senior White House officials and one unnamed ally close to the White House, the Post reported Wednesday that Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and first lady Melania Trump “have been privately pressing the President to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff.”
But deputy White House press secretary Lindsay Walters was straightforward to the paper: “These sources have been consistently wrong about Reince, and they’re still wrong today,” she said.
And Josh Raffel, the former Hollywood PR executive hired by Jared Kushner in April as a spokesperson, told the Post that “Jared and Ivanka are focused on working with Reince and the team to advance the President’s agenda and not on pushing for staff changes.”
Stephanie Grisham, communications director for the first lady, said simply that “while she does offer advice and perspectives on many things, Mrs. Trump does not weigh in on West Wing staff.”
The Post’s story came on the heels of a series of damaging New York Times reports, which eventually resulted in Donald Trump Jr. releasing a series of emails Tuesday showing him responding enthusiastically to the promise of dirt on Hillary Clinton provided as part of a Russian government effort to aide his father’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Though Trump Jr. published the emails before the New York Times did, the Post painted a vivid picture of a White House renewing the bitter search for leakers within its ranks.
