White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway says that Chief of Staff John Kelly is not on his way out, as far as she knows.
Conway batted down a report on Friday that said that Kelly was looking to leave, possibly soon, and the president is considering his budget director and the VP’s chief of staff as his replacements.
‘As far as I know, General Kelly wants to stay and he is staying. He hasn’t said anything differently to me and I come here to work every day with the team that the president has asked us all to work with and we do,’ Conway said.
White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway says that Chief of Staff John Kelly is not on his way out, as far as she knows
‘As far as I know, General Kelly wants to stay and he is staying. He hasn’t said anything differently to me and I come here to work every day with the team,’ she said Friday on Fox News
Conway batted down a report on Friday that said that Kelly was looking to leave, possibly soon, and the president is considering his budget director Mick Mulvaney (left) and the VP’s chief of staff Nick Ayers (right) as his replacements
Kelly has been rumored to be on his way out for at least four months, since DailyMail.com reported on abuse allegations against former White House aide Rob Porter.
The White House chief of staff has been less visible in recent months and was not on the president’s trip two weeks ago to Singapore.
He was part of a group that traveled with the president this week to Fargo and Milwaukee on a two-day, multi-state trip after the surprise announcement of retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
And on Tuesday, the president gave the retired Marine General a shout out at a Medal of Honor event.
‘I have a four-star in here, John Kelly. A special guy. Where’s John? Where is he? John?’ he said looking to acknowledge him. ‘Special man.’
After the previous set of rumors in early May that Kelly was on his way out, Trump brought his chief of staff up to reporters on the tarmac before a trip to Dallas and sang his praises.
Trump said the Kelly is doing a ‘fantastic job’ and that he did not believe reports that claimed his chief of staff had called him am idiot.
A Wall Street Journal report on Thursday that Trump was mulling replacements again for the White House chief of staff.
‘I spoke to the president, who refuted this article,’ White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters responded. ‘He said it is absolutely not true and that it is fake news.’
The Journal reported that names being floated to succeed Kelly, a decorated U.S. Marine Corps general, included White House budget office chief Mick Mulvaney and Nick Ayers, who is Vice President Pence’s chief of staff.
Kelly, according to the paper, could leave the administration this summer, or as soon as this week.
Mulvaney said Friday that he has not spoke to the president about the chief of staff position.
‘I’ve heard those same rumors about three times now in the last 12 months,’ he said. ‘I’ll start dealing with that issue when the president actually raises it with me, as opposed to the media, and that hasn’t happened yet.’
Conway similarly said Friday on Fox, ‘I don’t understand these stories in that the media is sort of like ants on a sugar cube always go and focus on one thing. It seems to come up every month or two or three months.
‘But here you got responses directly from the president and from our Chief of Staff John Kelly yesterday that it is all news to them. And so we have a Chief of Staff, I’m delighted to serve under Chief of Staff Kelly and I work with whomever the president asks me to work with here in the West Wing and across his administration,’ she said.
For her part, Conway indicated that she wanted Kelly to remain.
‘I find this place to be much more streamlined and much more sophisticated and running in a very good way a year-and-a-half into the presidency and we don’t run around wondering who’s leaving next, who’s going to be forced out, we get to work every day and there’s so much on our plate as you know that’s just not one of them. But I’ll leave that to them,’ she said.