Humiliate, Reince, Repeat

Jonathan Swan and the gang over at Politico 2.0 are publicly asking how long White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus will put up with Donald Trump crapping all over his loser ass.

A much-discussed question at the top of the White House: just what magnitude of indignity would it take for Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to resign?

• President Trump knew that appointing Anthony Scaramucci as communications director would humiliate Reince, who fought hard against it.
• Scaramucci was smuggled into the meeting with the President on Thursday so Reince wouldn't know about it. Trump had already taken pains to hide the discussions from his Chief of Staff, knowing Reince would try to foil the move.
• Trump also knew that inserting a line in the press release saying Scaramucci would report directly to the President — doing an end-run around Reince — was perhaps an unendurable public humiliation.

The reality is that the various factions in the White House (Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., etc.) are all fighting for power as the old man's ship spirals down the drain, but Swan admits frankly that as incompetent as Preibus is, there doesn't seem to be anyone else who actually wants the job.

And why would they?  Even Politico 1.0 is hard-pressed to find an answer to why, but the who may already be known.

Reince Priebus took the punishing job of President Donald Trump's chief of staff with the idea that he would stick it out for at least one year.

Six months in, with one of his top allies in the West Wing — press secretary Sean Spicer — on his way out, Priebus is in defensive mode, his role diminished and an internal rival hogging the limelight.

Trump's decision to bring Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci into the role of communications director shows the rising power of political outsiders and the diminished influence of establishment figures — which Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, epitomizes.

One White House official and two outside advisers said that while Scaramucci was brought into the White House for the communications job, he's considered an internal candidate to eventually succeed Priebus as chief of staff. There are also a handful of outside candidates.
The unexpected hire has raised questions of whether more shake-ups are coming, even as the White House has tried to downplay its internal discord. The instability has made it difficult for the administration to fend off questions about ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia and to move forward an embattled legislative agenda.

When the DC news guys are openly speculating on who your replacement is going to be as White House Chief of Staff, odds are pretty good you've already lost the job.