Transcript for Trump chief of staff announcement looms as Nick Ayers declines role

So a lot of news came out over the weekend the investigations but also the fact that president trump announced. That chief of staff John Kelly will be leaving by the end of the years I wanna go to Karen Travers who's at the White House. Karen how you doing this morning you know one possible contender they said was make here is but he said that he's not going to take the job. So where does that leave everything. Now this is an interesting the way this played out over the weekend where the president announced on Saturday the John callies chief the staff will be leaving that role by the end of the year. Good for it on Saturday said that the person taking over would do it on an interim basis and that led many to believe that it what is going to be nick Ayers the vice president's chief of staff. Who had long been said to be at the top of the president's list a to replace Kelly. If and when Kelly eventually left yesterday that nick Ayers took himself out of the running publicly said he would stay on and help the president on the campaign side of things. He's an operative he is a campaign strategists for me moving back to Georgia so. This cleans wide open field as to who is gonna take over this consequential position here in the west wing. The president is said to be considering a list of candidates right now and hear a couple of the names that we're told he's interest did and you've got Republican congressman mark meadows and North Carolina very conservative congressman has been a strong ally of the president. Former Tom deputy campaign manager David box seat the current Treasury Secretary Steve minutia and the acting attorney general Matt Whitaker and the president's budget director Mick mall Haney. The presidency tweeting on Sunday that he was interviewing contenders for this position and we'll be making. The decision soon but it's not clear what that timeline will be and who is the leading candidate at this point for this very very important position here in the White House. Yet Karen do you think that all of this all of this can affect the negotiations for the government funding. I think it'll be completely separate I mean the president did say that highly will be staying on in this role of chief of staff until the end of the year which is really only three weeks. The government funding site is gonna happen over the next two weeks congress has a deadline of next Friday December 21 but not somebody that's had strong ties or significant outreach to lawmakers. That hasn't been a role that he has played so it's hard to see how Kelly can it be a big factor over the next two weeks if he hasn't been up until this point. The president will be sitting down tomorrow here at the white house with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that's going to be a very important meeting to see. Who might buds if at all and whether or not make a deal can be made about funding for the border while on funding for the Department of Homeland Security. I right Karen thank you so much we really appreciate it.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.