Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is seen as a potential successor. The 35-year-old Georgia native has been close to Jared Kushner since the 2016 campaign. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Ayers and Mulvaney eyed as possible successors to John Kelly

John Kelly has long told associates he wanted to make it a year in the White House, but has been telling people in recent days that he expects to leave his role as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff “very soon.”

According to two Republicans close to the White House, the retired Marine general may depart before his July 31 anniversary.


These people said Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is being eyed as a potential successor, a move that would lend considerable political heft as the president steps up his campaigning to help Republicans keep control of Congress and begins to plan for his 2020 campaign.

Ayers, a 35-year-old Georgia native who has been close to the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, since the 2016 campaign, brings with him a portfolio that Trump has lacked in his No. 2 under Kelly — that of a savvy and seasoned political tactician.

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But these individuals said that Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who emerged as a favorite of Trump’s during the victorious effort to pass tax reform last winter, is also a possible candidate for the top White House post.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday that Ayers and Mulvaney were being discussed as possible replacements for Kelly. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told reporters aboard Air Force One en route home from Trump’s two-day swing through North Dakota and Wisconsin that the president had refuted the Journal report.

“He referred to it as fake news,” Walters said. “I've also spoken to General Kelly, who said this was news to him.”

People in the building who want Kelly out, said a third Republican close to Trump, are calling former Trump staffers, “making sure that they are helping get this expedited.”

Kelly, who previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security, succeeded Trump’s first chief, Reince Priebus, at an unusually chaotic moment in Trump’s presidency amid the 10-day communications director stint of financier Anthony Scaramucci — whom Kelly dismissed in one of his first orders of business.

As chief, Kelly initially imposed order, limiting access to the Oval Office and streamlining the flow of paper to the president’s desk. But he has largely yielded his role as West Wing enforcer as his relationship with the president has soured.

Even as his departure has been foreshadowed for months, including by critics who wish to speed up the process, the White House has repeatedly stood by Kelly.

The Trump administration aggressively defended his accusations against a Florida congresswoman last fall, denying he had misrepresented her remarks during the dedication of an FBI field office.

White House officials also slammed the famously behatted lawmaker, Rep. Frederica Wilson, as “all hat, no cattle.”

Kelly has sought to shape how he is covered in the news media, deploying people close to him to push back against stories that portray him as weak.

Kelly himself has done several off-the-record briefings with reporters.

