Still shaken by the leak of a morbid joke made at Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) expense during an internal White House meeting earlier this month, President Donald Trump has reportedly demanded a major shakeup of his communications team, Politico reported Tuesday.
And the President has asked the aide who made the joke about McCain “dying” to help him identify leakers, according to three people familiar with the situation who spoke to Politico.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has reportedly signed off on plans to reduce the number of midlevel and junior aides on the communications team, a move that will not impact high level officials like press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The communications teams housecleaning is one of many measures the White House plans to take to crack down on leaks. The New York Times reported last week that the White House was shrinking the size of its daily communications meetings in order to stifle what gets shared with the press.
Trump’s demands for change are reportedly in response to the leak of the McCain joke that special assistant Kelly Sadler made earlier this month.
During a meeting with Sadler and other staffers, Trump asked Sadler to help him identify leakers in the communications shop. In that same meeting, Trump also “expressed deep frustration,” in Politico’s words, with the excessive leaks that have plagued his presidency since Day One. He said the stories that are often privately shared with the media are inaccurate and damaging, according to Politico.
it’s really shocking what a disorganized, unprofessional mess this white house is, after all the success this president had in the private sector for decades, running a tight, ethical, and scandal-free series of businesses.
I assume that Trump is not at all concerned that he is the source of the leak via one of his frequent un-monitored calls.
I give it better than even odds that Trump himself is the source.
Once again, he’s not at all concerned about what was said, but rather that what was said was made publiuc knowledge. It’s like, what has this country come to when a man (or woman) can’t slander someone else behind their back?
In any other administration, this person would’ve been thrown under the bus so the president could save face, but with these folks that is their face.
The beatings will continue until morale improves, but as an actual response to a problem and not a joke on a piece of cardboard hung in a cubicle. But what else can they do? They’re the mean people who suck that the bumper stickers warned us about.