Priebus’s resignation is a turning point for the Trump presidency, but it’s too early to tell whether it will turn for the better or, somehow, the worse. Kelly will inherit a West Wing that has set a new standard for chaos, backstabbing, factionalism, and inefficacy. While every administration suffers from some rivalries, the poisonous atmosphere in Trump’s White House has exceeded all of them, bursting into full view Thursday evening with an explosive series of comments from Scaramucci to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza.

“Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly,” Scaramucci told Lizza. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”

Scaramucci believed, wrongly, that Priebus had leaked his financial disclosure. (A Politico reporter had obtained it through a routine public-records request.) But the accusation of leaks was the final blow to the chief of staff.

Priebus arrived in the White House after serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee. The bland Wisconsinite was always a somewhat strange fit for the job. Though he’d proven himself a fairly able administrator at the RNC, he had none of the characteristics common to successful chiefs of staff: experience in government and especially the executive branch, a hard-headed ability to get his way, and an unshakeable bond with the president. In fact, Priebus had been wary of Trump’s candidacy all along, and when a tape was released in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Priebus urged him to drop out of the race—a slight Trump reportedly never forgot.

Nonetheless, the president chose him as chief of staff after his surprise victory, making Priebus the foremost avatar of the Republican establishment in the White House. Trump set Priebus up for failure from the start. The president allowed several rival power centers to exist in the West Wing, including chief strategist Steve Bannon (with whom Priebus often clashed early on), senior adviser Jared Kushner, and aide Kellyanne Conway. Many of these people had Oval Office “walk-in” privileges, allowing them to go directly to Trump without passing through Priebus.

When Trump’s legislative initiatives began to struggle, he lashed out at Priebus, whose close relationship with Speaker Paul Ryan was supposed to make moving legislation through the House easy. Bannon sought to undercut Priebus, portraying him as a “globalist” who didn’t buy into the Trump project. When then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer disappointed Trump, he blamed Priebus, who’d brought Spicer over from the RNC. Priebus was also held responsible for failing to stop leaks, although given that he was a frequent target, he was clearly in no position to do that. News reports repeatedly claimed that Trump was interviewing possible successors.