New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said President Donald Trump doesn’t want to fire White House Chief of Staff John Kelly directly and is trying to make him quit on his own.

“It is definitely true that the president is looking to make more changes. As you both know very well the president tends to marinate on these ideas for a while before he actually goes ahead and does them, so this could be quite sometime,” Haberman said on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday.

“We know he soured a long time ago on Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security. Many people in the West Wing believe this is really about getting rid of John Kelly,” she said. (RELATED: New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: Oval Office Incident Speaks To ‘John Kelly’s Temper’)

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Haberman claimed Trump is hoping Kelly will decide to leave on his own terms.

“The president is having trouble bringing himself to firing a four-star general and he is looking to create a condition where Kelly would leave voluntarily,” she continued.

“I’m not sure that Kelly will do it,” she said. “I think that we have been talking about John Kelly’s departure literally for a year now — but now seems like a likelier time than ever as the president heads into a mid-term cycle and has a chief of staff who, but his own admission is not very steeped in politics.”

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