President Donald Trump’s frantic search for a new chief of staff after the midterms reached into his own family, according to his biographer.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff revealed on Saturday’s episode of “Inside Trump’s Head” that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser during his first term, landed on a short list of possible replacements for outgoing chief of staff Susie Wiles. Trump ultimately handed the job to Stephen Miller, his longtime adviser and the architect of his hard-line immigration agenda.
Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles that Trump started calling around on Wednesday, the day after Republicans’ election-night losses, to talk through candidates. One of those calls went to someone Wolff knows, who then phoned Wolff and repeated the conversation.
“This happens all the time,” Wolff noted. “Donald Trump calls people, and then they call other people, including me.”
Wolff declined to name most of the list, saying he would be exposing a source, but he singled out one name.
“Among the people on the list is Jared Kushner,” Wolff disclosed. “Jared Kushner was on the list to be chief of staff.”
He cautioned that it was unclear how seriously Trump meant it, noting that the president has long eyed his son-in-law for the post. Trump has “toyed with bringing Jared into that role” throughout both administrations, Wolff explained, and in the first term Kushner “really did have that role without having that role.”
Wolff described the list as the people Trump “feels have been closest to him.”
Another person on the list, whom Wolff also knows, reacted with dread when Wolff called to give him the news. After a long pause, Wolff recalled, the man asked, “What terrible things might I have done in a past life to deserve this?”
“This is a terrible job,” Wolff said, arguing that “only the most rabid Donald Trump sycophant, I think, would take [it] without some serious, serious consideration.”
The search came to an abrupt end Thursday, when Wolff said Trump screamed at Wiles in front of others and she “fled through the door.” According to Wolff, she then leaked her exit, forcing Trump to name a successor on the spot “so it didn’t look like she quit.”
That left Miller, who in Wolff’s telling “was perhaps the only person ready at the drop of a hat to step into that job.”
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