President Trump’s team has struggled to find candidates willing to take over the White House press shop after observing months of upheaval, the departures of two successive communications directors and the president’s refusal to cede control of his message to anyone besides himself.
Sources close to the White House said senior aides have begun requesting resumes and debating names for potential communications directors, but have had little luck attracting the kind of public relations talent they seek.
“There are very few out there that would want to, honestly, serve in this White House,” one source said.
That source noted the White House team is considering candidates that are “big names in the PR and communications world” but who are “not big names in politics.”
One such name, according to another person familiar with the situation, is Scott Reed, a well-known GOP operative who previously served as executive director of the Republican National Committee and who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Reed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials have made serious inquiries to at least two other prospective candidates for the communications position, sources told the Washington Examiner, but neither was interested in the job.
“Any competent communications director, after watching the last seven months of this comms shop, is going to want to come in and shift around the department so that it works,” a person familiar with the process said.
“Nobody has been assured that they have the flexibility to bring in their own people,” the person added. “And so that’s the reservation that people are going to have.”
Former press secretary Sean Spicer’s impending exit from the West Wing rocked the communications office when it was announced last month. Spicer had long presided as the unofficial communications director, and his resignation created uncertainty for the handful of other RNC alumni who came into the White House with him.
A person familiar with the events said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Spicer’s successor as press secretary, shielded the communications aides below her in the scramble that followed Spicer’s departure.
“Sarah is literally protecting all the RNC people,” the person said. “She was never really integrated” into the “culture” of the Trump campaign, that person explained. The person noted Sanders’ insistence that no additional press aides be fired could serve as a deterrent to prospective communications directors who may want to build their own teams.
Several sources included in the talks said Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser, has been floated as a possible candidate for the post, although most clarified that the idea has not progressed beyond a hypothetical proposal. Miller served as Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ communications director when Sessions represented Alabama in the Senate.
One person familiar with the discussions said Miller was presented during internal debates as “the devil we know,” as opposed to an unknown outsider who could further upend the press shop.
After the turmoil that accompanied the brief tenure of Anthony Scaramucci, the bombastic White House communications director who left just days after newly minted White House chief of staff John Kelly’s arrival, people close to the situation suggested Trump and his top aides hope to find someone with a clear record of dealing with the media. While Scaramucci’s performance on television had impressed the president, his lack of communications strategy credentials ultimately proved to be a major liability when he accelerated his ouster from the White House by unleashing a profanity-laced tirade against a reporter.
Scaramucci’s predecessor left the post under far more conventional circumstances.
Mike Dubke, the president’s first communications director, quietly resigned from the job in May after less than three months in the White House.
Dubke and Spicer repeatedly confronted the difficulty of speaking for a president who prefers to speak for himself when Trump contradicted their claims in tweets and interviews.
For example, Trump caused an uproar in May when he told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he had decided to fire his FBI director long before the deputy attorney general recommended he do so, directly undercutting his press team’s claims that the deputy attorney general’s recommendation prompted the firing.
Trump has also openly criticized his communications aides and has blamed them for failing to increase coverage of his administration’s accomplishments.
The president’s long-running feud with the media, including the reporters he frequently excoriates on Twitter, will create challenges for any communications director hoping to forge friendly relationships with the press.
A source close to the White House said the next communications director will likely be someone who is “so desperate for a title” that they will accept the position even under “the condition that they don’t fire anybody.”
Although some have since disputed the veracity of his claims, Scaramucci boasted during his short-lived stint in the press shop that he had the president’s permission to fire anyone he wanted.
Kelly does have broad hiring and firing power, and the new communications director could ultimately be one of his first major hires since arriving in the West Wing.
White House officials are still in the early stages of selecting Kelly’s replacement as the secretary of Homeland Security, people familiar with the discussions said.
Potential candidates for the Cabinet post include Ray Kelly, former New York City police commissioner, and Sessions, whose staff has aggressively denied that the attorney general was ever a serious possibility to take over at DHS.
Trump’s allies have warned that any effort to remove Sessions from the Justice Department would be viewed as an attempt to suppress the Russia investigation, from which Sessions recused himself.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo has also been floated as a potential replacement for Kelly, although it is unclear whether he would consider accepting the job if offered. One source said Trump considered tapping Pompeo for his chief of staff and spoke with him in person about the possibility before selecting Kelly.
That source said top aides have not demonstrated a sense of urgency to fill the DHS post in part because Kelly is still “kind of minding the shop over there,” although he has ceded day-to-day duties to an acting secretary.
