White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus' job is in no apparent danger, despite work from Steve Bannon's old hangout to the contrary, but Priebus' deputy Katie Walsh is either fleeing the ship or has been tossed from it.
President Donald Trump launched his first West Wing shake-up less than three months into his term, sending deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh to bolster the flagging outside groups that were meant to support his agenda, according to a Republican source close to the White House and a senior administration official. [...]
Walsh is expected to serve as an adviser both to a pro-Trump nonprofit and the RNC. The non-profit, America First, is stocked with veterans of the campaign and has been struggling to get off the ground.
Which is a good fit, because Walsh already has a lot of experience with Trump veterans struggling to get things off the ground. Why, it will hardly be any change at all!
As Trump's approval ratings fall below those of Watergate Nixon, there seems to be a renewed push to ramp up outside pro-Trump groups to counteract the man's increasing toxicity. The Mercer family just plunked down $1.3 million for new ads fluffing Trump; if the White House is to be believed (hint: no) they're dispatching a top-level White House lieutenant to oversee a different pro-Trump propaganda effort because they think that’s a more critical effort than the actual governing part they’re so badly screwing up.
Keep in mind, though: it's only March. Trump took office only two short months ago, and his allies are already scrambling to save him from a stream of foreign policy blunders, executive order fiascos, and a legislative agenda that's going over about as well as if he had promised to put a dead fish in every mailbox. If Team Trump is really willing to shed White House staff to outside Trump-fluffing efforts after only two months, that’s a sign of apoplectic desperation.
As for whether we can believe that the White House really did dispatch Walsh on their own initiative, that again presumes that you can believe anything that comes out of the White House that brazenly lies to reporters on an hourly basis. Perhaps they did initiate the move, or perhaps Walsh is fleeing the White House grounds to take another job because of the reportedly toxic and chaotic environment within the building. Team Trump is still struggling to staff his administration; if the top people themselves start wandering off in fatigue or disgust, that's going to complicate things even more.