Longtime newsman Bob Schieffer has been in Washington for 48 years, and he said he has never seen such a chaotic and feuding White House as President Trump’s.

“The White House itself is as disorganized as the bureaucracy is and perhaps that’s where it all starts,” Schieffer said this week at a CSIS “Schieffer Series” conference on the State of the Union. He is a CSIS trustee.



The former CBS News anchor and reporter referenced the controversial new book “Fire and Fury,” and while not endorsing it, said the author “captured the chaos that’s in the White House right now, there’s just no question about it.”

The newsman described his view that the White House is a jumble of warring factions, including the president’s children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

“They removed one faction when they got (Steve) Bannon out of there but you’ve still got four or five. You’ve got the boys over here, and they represent their own agenda, and they don’t particularly like their brother-in-law who is married to their sister over here. And that’s another faction over there. When you had (former chief of staff) Reince Priebus and (former spokesman) Sean Spicer that was yet another faction,” said Schieffer.

“So all of this is going and, I mean, I can truly say, I’ve been in Washington for 48 years now, I have never ever seen a White House that operates the way that this one does,” he said.

“Sometimes they get some things done and sometimes they don’t. But a lot of time it’s not just arguments over the policy it’s simply unfamiliarity with the process of how the government works. And I think they are all still feeling their way,” he added.

Always an entertaining storyteller, Schieffer told of how he used to believe Capitol Hill was the best beat in Washington because there are so may rivals there.

But, he said, “I think I’m going to have to change that because that’s not longer apt because there are as many factions today in the White House as there are up on Capitol Hill. And they’re all leaking about each other, they all have their own agendas

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com