Reince Priebus has been standing on the edge of quicksand for quite some time, as the dark forces around him shift and morph. In mid-February when the Flynn debacle occurred, Priebus was considered toast and the smart money said that Kellyanne Conway was going to succeed the former RNC head. Take a look at what Roger Stone had to say, Politico, February 13th:
Trump loyalists — meaning the true believers who supported Trump from the start, not Republican politicos who became attached later on — have been privately musing about getting rid of Priebus. Now, that musing is going public. “I think this is Pearl Harbor for the true Trump supporters, the Trump loyalists,” said Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign adviser and longtime Republican operative who still has a relationship with Trump. “I believe Reince Priebus moved on General Flynn and I think he intends to move on Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller next. He is not serving the president well. The people he hired are loyal to the Republican National Committee, not the President of the United States.”
At Breitbart, the right-wing outlet that until recently was run by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and has served as a loyal defender of Trumpism, the narrative was set early with a piece by editor-at-large Joel Pollak questioning the role of U.S. intelligence agencies in the leaks that brought down Flynn. Pollak and other Trump defenders are arguing that the real story is the fact of the leaks themselves, and not what was leaked.
The very next day, February 14th, Breitbart published this report which also showed Priebus in the doghouse;
Specifically, multiple sources close to President Trump with internal knowledge of White House operations told Breitbart News on Monday night that the buck stops with Priebus when it comes to the botched rollout of the executive order temporarily banning most travel to the United States from seven nations with a history of exporting terrorism and temporarily halting the refugee program. This news comes of course in the wake of the news that Flynn was pushed out, but also as more and more reports of a likely shake-up at the top loom.
“Reince is responsible, ultimately, for the rollout of the immigration executive order,” one source said. “He failed to get [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions on the calendar in the Senate in time for what he knew would be a highly controversial executive order. He was supposed to be this wizard in dealing with congressional Republicans, but has not been successful in getting anything serious done.”
[...]
“It’s actually not just Sessions,” the third source said. “It’s everyone. Reince really has not done enough in pressuring [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell to move faster. Sure, the Democrats are using all their tools, but McConnell isn’t doing everything he can either—and Reince is not doing anything about it. With floor time so scarce, the White House can’t expect Mitch to click his heels without a little push.”
Wow. Breitbart depicted Priebus as not only incompetent, but globally loathed. Meanwhile, back at the White House, Steve Bannon denied what Breitbart printed, to the astonishment of one and all, and told CNN that, "The story is totally untrue. Reince is doing a great job. I couldn't ask anymore from a partner." Of course, no one with any media savvy really believed that Boyle at Breitbart had done anything or was even capable of doing anything without Bannon knowing about it. A reporter from the Atlantic was quoted as saying that, "Bannon was the editor there until fifteen minutes ago, it's not likely that he didn't know about the article. “ And Bannon, continuing his act of contrition, so to speak, showed that he and Reince were the best of chums, even going so far as publicly embracing Reince in a literal sense at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, to quash the unfair gossip of discord between the two Trump power brokers. Check out the link because Bannon patting Priebus' leg and Priebus swatting Bannon’s hand away is a sight worth seeing. And tales of this bromance didn't end there. Bannon and Priebus gave a joint interview to New York magazine a few weeks ago talking about giving each other back rubs and how they fell asleep on the phone with each other.
Bannon and Priebus spoke with me on a prearranged conference call, joined by Katie Walsh, Priebus’s deputy, and Lindsay Walters, deputy to press secretary Sean Spicer. For about 25 minutes, talking into Walsh’s cell phone on speaker mode, Bannon and Priebus performed a buddy comedy, finishing each other’s sentences and swearing up and down that they are good friends who work together well — and constantly.
“I’m quite aggressive, and Reince is a calming influence on hey — bang bang bang, here’s how we ought to think about doing that,” Bannon said, explaining how their personal styles complement each other.
“We talk a lot, pretty much all day long,” Priebus said. “And then we communicate at night —”
“Until we fall asleep,” Bannon interjected with a laugh.
Priebus cut in, “Until somebody falls asleep … You fell asleep last night.”
So what happened to the greatest male buddy team since Butch and Sundance and why is Priebus suddenly the scapegoat in what we are told is the fine jewelled chronometer of the Trump White House? Politico said this:
The White House personnel who spoke to Politico complained about a range of issues from lackluster morning meetings to Priebus’ “suffocating” management style and the fact that he sprints into meetings.
“He literally runs,” said one staffer, who believed the sudden arrival is a gambit for Priebus to catch snatches of conversation not intended for him in a White House plagued with leaks.“To some, Priebus’ determination to always be at Trump’s side — not to mention his desire to place loyalists in the White House — underscores his desire for greater control,” wrote Isenstadt and Dawsey. “He has competed for influence along with several other senior aides, including Bannon, Kushner, counselor Kellyanne Conway, and economic adviser Gary Cohn.”
“I feel for him,” said one senior administration official, who also asked to go unnamed. “I really do.”
“The "Night of Long Knives," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate Hitler's absolute hold on power in Germany,“ quoting Wikipedia. Over 85 of Hitler's political enemies were eliminated. Here, in the Trump regime, it's anybody's guess who will fall, but I personally would name Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, it's just a question of in what order they hit the chessboard.
And why the game reversal on Preibus? Again, it's anybody's guess, but knowing how Steve Bannon, the Father Of All Lies operates, I would opine that Bannon's modus operandi lay in being BFFs with Reince for a time so that at the end of the day, Bannon could always say with a tear in his eye how wonderful Reince was and what great pals they were, but the wishes of the president come before any other consideration, duty before friendship, or something to that effect. My prediction is that Trump will end up being the heavy in Bannon's eventual and certain undoing of Preibus. What the GOP will say and do once their homeboy is out of the White House remains to be seen.