MSNBC hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi bemoaned the White House's shortlist of potential candidates to be the next chief of staff being "all white guys."

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that Chief of Staff John Kelly would depart at the end of the year, and Trump's top pick, Mike Pence aide Nick Ayers, turned down the job to run a super PAC for Trump's re-election. NBC White House correspondent Geoff Bennett noted all the other potential candidates, like Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, were males.

"Make no mistake, they are all men," Bennett said.

Ruhle, who like her co-host is fond of peppering their news program with editorializing, said any company would be "clobbered" in the court of public opinion if it had a list for such a senior position that didn't include minorities or women.

"You and I talk about business all the time," Ruhle said, as Velshi nodded. "That's a major position, and the six people that they have put out that are short-listed, are all white guys. I cannot think of one single public company right now, that if they had an open senior position like that or a board seat, you would never in 2018, say that the short list is one, two, three, four, five, six white guys."

"Right, even if you're not going to pick somebody else, you usually put them on the list just for—" Velshi said.

"Isn't that stunning?" Ruhle asked "These are our six. If you saw a public company put out that list right now, they would get clobbered."

The White House chief of staff role has historically not been held by a diverse group of people. All four of President Barack Obama's full-time chiefs of staff were white men, as was every chief of staff in White House history before them.