Chief of staff John Kelly departing the White House

Calling Kelly “a great guy,” Trump said his replacement would be announced in the next few days.

Kelly, 68, was brought into the high-profile role in July 2017 after Trump fired then-chief of staff Reince Priebus. During his first few months on the job, Kelly reportedly told White House staff that he was not concerned with how long each staff member has been with the Trump camp or how they made it to the White House. He said that each member of the staff works with one common purpose: to serve at the pleasure of the president

The former marine corps general worked to limit access to the Oval Office, and made it his personal mission to end sensitive leaks that beset the president since the outset of his administration, and had devastated employee morale. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and national security adviser Sebastian Gorka were fired just weeks after Kelly showed up, and quickly ended Anthony Scaramucci’s 10-day stint as communications director, who was brought on to fire many of Preibus’s original hires, a former White House aide told the Washington Examiner.

His had recently reportedly clashed with first lady Melania Trump over issues like staffing and travel requests.

Rumors of Kelly’s exit from the administration have floated around Washington, D.C. for months, often citing to the general’s sometimes downtrodden demeanor during public events.

One of the most prominent examples was a photo of Kelly staring at the ground with crossed arms went viral during a press conference in 2017, when Trump condemned the removal of Confederate statues from public places and lashed out at reporters for mischaracterizing his remarks about “both sides” being at fault during a violent white supremacist rally just days earlier.

The president did his best to squelch the rumors as they came, typically arguing that it is common for administrations to have some shakeups but that everyone in his camp, including Kelly, was happy in his White House.

“[Gen.] John Kelly is doing a fantastic job as [c]hief of [s]taff. There is tremendous spirit and talent in the [White House],” Trump tweeted last August, just weeks after Kelly began.

Last February, Kelly survived a major controversy in involving former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned from his post over allegations of spousal abuse. Some colleagues claimed Trump’s top aide misled them about the Porter situation, while Kelly himself struggled to offer a concrete timeline of what transpired.

Soon after Porter’s departure, Kelly issued a memo to the White House counsel and top intelligence agencies ordering a complete overhaul of the security clearance process for current and incoming administration officials.

Kelly then became the subject of rampant speculation about his own job status. Reports emerged about him privately insulting Trump, complaining to friends and lawmakers about his misery at the White House, and dumping much of his day-to-day duties on deputy chief of staff Zachary Fuentes. Kelly himself told NPR in May that his days typically began at 5:30 a.m. and ended “at 8, 8:30 p.m. or later.”

“Working in the White House is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, bar none,” he said, complaining mostly about the media’s treatment of him, his colleagues, and the president.

A source close to the White House said Kelly often told friends he would only leave if the president asked him to, but slowly warmed to the idea of leaving on his own accord in the spring. The same source said Trump’s chief of staff was furious over the president’s berating of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, a successor he helped select, during a Cabinet meeting in May.

Trump has previously floated Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows as a possible replacements for Kelly, but the White House gave no indication who might be at the top of its list.