This afternoon, the White House announced that Communications Director Bill Shine is leaving to become a “senior adviser” to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. It was a move many interpreted as a soft landing, given that Shine was only on the job for eight months. “Bill was iced out,” a Republican close to the White House told me, echoing the view of multiple sources that the president had been souring on the former Fox News co-president for months. “Trump has been calling him Bill ‘No Shine,’” one source briefed on the conversations told me.

Trump’s decision to hire Shine last July completed the Fox-ification of the West Wing. Shine got the job after his close friend Sean Hannity lobbied Trump to name Shine chief of staff. “The relationship was always Hannity based,” a former West Wing official explained. “When Trump hired him it was like he thought, ‘I’m getting Hannity.’ I’m like, no you’re getting the guy who produced Hannity.” Trump put Shine in charge of the beleaguered White House press operation with a mandate to plug leaks and improve his image. Shine accomplished neither. In Shine’s defense, the brief was impossible given Trump’s destructive Twitter habits. “Trump needs someone to blame for his bad press,” another former West Wing official said.

Shine was in over his head from the beginning. As Roger Ailes’s right hand, he had virtually no direct contacts with reporters and no involvement in Fox’s P.R. department. “Bill’s not a strategist,” a former Fox executive told me. That lack of experience was evident last September when Shine was caught flat-footed during the rollout of Bob Woodward’s book Fear. “Trump started complaining to people there was no advance prep on Woodward’s book,” the Republican close to the White House said. “Trump let Shine know he wasn’t happy.”

In December, Shine told friends his days could be numbered. (As I previously reported, he even debated re-signing the lease on his Washington, D.C., apartment.) Late last month, Shine was left off the trip to Vietnam for Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un, a crucial media moment if there ever was one. Instead, he attended CPAC with his wife, Darla.

One theory being discussed is that Trump pushed Shine out now because House Democrats are looking to investigate the White House’s ties to Fox. Jane Mayer reported this week that Trump directed then-economic adviser Gary Cohn to instruct the Justice Department to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Cohn reportedly didn’t act on it.

Ultimately, Shine’s departure will have little effect on the White House message operation. “Nothing will change. At this point we realize this is the Trump show,” a veteran of the 2016 campaign said.