In this Feb. 2, 2018, file photo, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly listens during a meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean defectors in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)

The 27th week of John Kelly's tenure as President Donald Trump's chief of staff was undoubtedly his worst – and his foes are seizing on the open wound.

Kelly's handling of the abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter have undermined his sheen of competence in the media's eyes and angered the president.

And in this upside-down White House, the former may be more crucial than the latter.

Trump is known to get exasperated at almost everyone around him at some point – from Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon to Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions. The president's annoyance at Kelly was initially born out of his restriction of access to Trump and the outside impression that he was the adult brought in to manage the president's worst impulses.

But Kelly's reputation of having delivered a new sense of order and organization to a chaotic White House largely protected him from the whims of the president's fickle moods. With the bungled ouster of Porter, that's now gone, according to current White House aides and outside advisers.

"What Kelly had was a protective shield because if he was fired, the media would freak out and say it's the end of the administration. Kelly lost that force field. The force field that protected Kelly has been knocked down," says one GOP consultant close to the White House.

But as with any power struggle in Trump's White House, differing factions have opposing interests and therefore push narratives biased by their own preferred outcomes.

One aide inside the White House says reports of Kelly's demise have been "overblown" and stresses that, while Trump and Kelly have a very open and candid relationship with one another, Kelly's status remains "secure." The incident, this aide says, is undoubtedly being used by Kelly's adversaries to undermine him, but the real blame should lay at the feet of Hope Hicks, the communications director who helped craft the initial statements defending Porter and rallied support for him.

Kelly had been aware of the allegations Porter had emotionally and physically abused his two ex-wives, but when the chief of staff questioned Porter about it, he repeatedly downplayed and denied them, according to this aide.

"Rob had the reputation of a Boy Scout. We were all shocked, shocked, shocked," says this aide, who admits the episode has consumed the West Wing.

Hicks, who has been romantically linked with Porter in press accounts, defended him internally – a lapse in judgment that helped produce the initial round of statements supporting Porter from Kelly, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and even Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Porter's former boss.

On Thursday, deputy press secretary Raj Shah admitted White House staff "could've done better."

"Hope should've never been involved in the response. It was an emotional reaction to protect Rob," the White House aide says.

But there's consensus that Hicks – one of Trump's closest confidantes and a personal friend of many of his children – is unlikely to be sacrificed for the ordeal. What could happen is that her power might be curtailed in ways not seen by the public.

Mercedes Schlapp, the former conservative television commentator who came on board in September to bolster the communications team, has been steadily taking over more day-to-day responsibilities of operations, according to another source, and has been internally fighting for the influence she was promised when she took the job.

Kelly, on the other hand, now has a target on his back and has been weakened in his cold war with Trump's children, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, who have been unsettled by Kelly's iron-fisted move that restricted their unfettered daily access to their father.

Some in the White House are rolling their eyes at a report that portrayed Ivanka Trump as the truth-teller who rushed into the West Wing to show her father photos of Porter's battered ex-wife. Kushner, after all, studied at Harvard with Porter and the two were seen as close. The leak was seen by some as a strategic way to insulate the couple from a dirty secret that was widely known.

Trump is constantly privately ruminating about replacements for staff, with varying seriousness, but the outside Republican adviser says that, amid the Porter turmoil, the president has floated two possible replacements for Kelly: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Mick Mulvaney, his current budget director.

A change of chief is not seen as imminent, given the Washington firestorm a firing of Kelly would produce.

But Kelly, once revered by Trump for his four stars, is now suffering from a dimmed reputation.

Those both inside and outside the White House who have lost face time with Trump smell blood and are wielding knives through leaks and evening calls to the president.