poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201705/2924/1155968404_5453533342001_5453523512001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump's communications director is out as larger shakeup looms Mike Dubke, who was on the job a little over three months, resigned May 18. 
 
 Mike Dubke, President Donald Trump’s communications director, has resigned as Trump considers a larger personnel shakeup to confront the growing scandals weighing down his administration. 
 
 The veteran GOP strategist privately announced his resignation in a meeting with the president on May 18, and Trump accepted immediately, Dubke said in an interview. He added that he offered to stay through Trump’s first foreign trip to ensure there was a smooth transition as he exited. 
 
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 Dubke, who spoke with POLITICO as he drove into the White House early Tuesday morning, said he expects to go back to Black Rock Group, his communications and public affairs firm. A White House official said press secretary Sean Spicer will return to his dual role as communications director until everything is sorted out. Axios first reported that Dubke was leaving. 
 
 “The reasons for my departure are personal, but it has been my great honor to serve President Trump and this administration,” Dubke emailed friends Tuesday morning. “It has also been my distinct pleasure to work side-by-side, day-by-day with the staff of the communications and press departments. This White House is filled with some of the finest and hardest working men and women in the American Government.” 
 
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 Chief of staff Reince Priebus thanked Dubke for his service in a statement Tuesday. “Mike will assist with the transition and be a strong advocate for the President and the President's policies moving forward,” Priebus said. 
 
 Dubke’s exit comes as Trump considers larger staff changes as he tries to contain the deepening scandals related to ties between Russia and his campaign. 
 
 Trump returned to Washington this weekend facing not only congressional probes but the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Trump’s associates and Russia as the Kremlin allegedly tried to tip the election Trump’s way. Trump, whose tweets were largely restrained while he was abroad, returned to form Tuesday morning, writing that Germany has a “MASSIVE trade deficit” with the U.S. and pays “FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military.” 
 
 “Very bad for U.S.,” he said. “This will change.” 
 
 In subsequent tweets, Trump claimed Russian officials are laughing at America and “how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.” He also recommended that the Senate do away with the legislative filibuster to advance health care legislation and approve tax cuts. Republicans, however, are already pursuing both issues with a budget procedure known as reconciliation that allows them to advance the measures with a simple majority. 
 
 The president rounded out his spree with retweets of his Memorial Day crowd size and an anonymously sourced Fox News report that says his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, didn’t suggest a Russian communications channel when he met with the Russian ambassador in December. 
 
 Beyond Dubke, Spicer, the press secretary, is expected to take on a reduced public role, though he is conducting the briefing later on Tuesday. Dubke, who was only on the job for a little over three months, had generally been seen as a Spicer ally in the White House. 
 
 Trump has also been in talks with former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie about taking on more formal roles, possibly in a crisis management function. Trump met with Lewandowski and Bossie in the White House on Monday, and the discussion centered on what role they could play, said one person briefed on the matter. 
 
 Trump is also said to have become more frustrated with Kushner, a top adviser who has become the subject of damaging reports alleging that he tried to set up secret communications with the Russians during the transition and failed to disclose multiple meetings with Russian officials. 
 
 However, it’s not clear that Trump would remove a family member, and Kushner’s lawyer said he is willing to cooperate with the various investigations into the matter. 
 
 White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday tried to downplay the idea of a staff shake-up and said Dubke has been professional about his departure. 
 
 “He has expressed his desire to leave the White House and made very clear that he would see through the president’s international trip and come to work every day and work hard even through that trip,” Conway told "Fox & Friends." 
 
 In a notoriously leak-prone White House, Dubke told POLITICO he was surprised that the news of his planned departure took 12 days to leak out. 
 
 A longtime Republican operative and establishment stalwart, Dubke never fit into a White House consumed by chaos. Some questioned why he and not a Trump loyalist was tapped for the communications director job. After being selected for the post, he began telling people in the administration that he never produced TV ads targeting Trump during the 2016 campaign — a move that was designed to reassure loyalists in the White House, but one that left some rankled. 
 
 There was also some awkwardness to Dubke’s role: internally, it was made clear he was subordinate to the press secretary, Spicer — an unusual set-up. Dubke also came under fire after POLITICO reported last month that the president didn’t have a foreign policy doctrine. 
 
 Trump told friends in recent weeks that he was unhappy with Dubke — and that he wondered why he never seemed to get positive press anymore. 
 
 As the president dwells on the scandals, the embattled communications wing has emerged as the center of possible change in the White House. It is seen as increasingly likely that Lewandowski and Bossie will take on some functions, though it remains unclear whether they will join the White House or work for Trump as outside advocates. Both have complex business dealings that would need to be untangled should they enter the administration in an official capacity. 
 
 The two fit the mold of what Trump is looking for. Both have reputations as cutthroat, hard-charging operatives, and both worked on Trump’s presidential campaign in senior roles. Lewandowski, however, was pushed out as campaign manager after a power struggle with campaign chairman Paul Manafort. And there are questions about how effective Lewandowski would be in a crisis management role, given how he has clashed with top Trump aides including Priebus and Kushner. 
 
 In recent days, the president has told aides he misses being around some of those who worked for him during the campaign and has talked about bringing the crew back together. 
 
 Other changes could also be in the works: While Spicer is likely to remain in the White House, Conway, a frequent Trump on-air surrogate, could take on a broader role. 
 
 Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report. ||||| President Donald Trump has set a deadline of July 4 for a shakeup of the White House that could include removing Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, according to two administration officials and three outside advisers familiar with the matter. 
 
 Although Trump has set deadlines for staff changes before, only to let them pass without pulling the trigger, the president is under more scrutiny than ever regarding the sprawling Russia investigation, which is intensifying the pressure on his White House team. 
 
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 Days after his return from his first foreign trip late last month, Trump berated Priebus in the Oval Office in front of his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie for the dysfunction in the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversation. 
 
 Trump had been mulling bringing on Bossie as his deputy White House chief of staff and Lewandowski as a White House senior adviser with a portfolio that includes Russia, but he told the two at that meeting that they would not be joining the White House until Priebus had a fair chance to clean up shop, according to the sources. 
 
 “I’m giving you until July 4,” Trump said, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. 
 
 “I don’t want them to come into this mess. If I’m going to clean house, they will come in as fresh blood.” 
 
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 White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in a statement on Sunday, disputed the idea that Priebus is facing a July 4 deadline. “Whoever is saying that is either a liar or out of the loop,” Spicer said. 
 
 The Independence Day deadline is timed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s deadline for passage of the health care bill through the chamber, which is also the start of the July 4th recess. Priebus took the brunt of the blame for the first failure to get a vote on the bill through the House, though the White House and Speaker Paul Ryan were ultimately able to secure its passage on a second try. 
 
 Talk of Trump’s July 4 deadline has made the rounds in the White House, but insiders and those close to the president are not holding their breath, given the perpetual talk that Priebus and other senior staffers are on the way out. 
 
 Trump’s first deadline for the firing of Priebus — and many staffers he brought on from the Republican National Committee — was the 100-day mark. 
 
 The president then considered the idea of a Memorial Day shakeup when he returned from the foreign trip. 
 
 “It’s become comical that every holiday becomes a referendum on Reince,” said one adviser to the president. 
 
 Sensing his impending doom even before he was criticized for fallout related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Priebus had joked, “I’ve got one foot on a banana peel and another out the door,” according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. 
 
 Deadlines haven’t been Trump’s only tactic for warning Priebus about his possible dismissal from the top of the administration. 
 
 Trump has openly floated the idea of other potential chiefs of staff, including former campaign aide David Urban and Wayne Berman, an executive at private equity giant Blackstone and adviser to Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman. Shortly after national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired in February, Trump invited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to the White House to help brainstorm about a new chief of staff, according to a White House official and outside adviser with knowledge of the situation. 
 
 But those who have known Trump for years, such as his former campaign adviser Sam Nunberg, say the “You’re fired” persona associated with his “Apprentice” fame doesn’t match up with the man away from the cameras. 
 
 “I don’t think he likes to gratuitously fire people,” said Nunberg, who was himself fired by Trump. “He wants to give people chances.” 
 
 Another outside adviser who regularly speaks to the president said Trump often threatens employees with the prospect of being fired to motivate them to do better, prompt them to resign or use them as an example for other staffers of what it can be like to be on his bad side. 
 
 “Trump will literally ask anyone who will listen, ‘Do you think Reince is doing a good job?’ or ‘Do you think that I should get rid of him?’” said that adviser, who has been asked that question by Trump. 
 
 Trump has yet to allow Priebus to choose a deputy to replace his former deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh. Walsh, a Priebus ally who worked with him at the RNC, was moved to an outside political group supporting Trump’s presidency after the failure to pass the first Obamacare repeal bill in March. 
 
 Former communications director Mike Dubke is a recent example of a White House staffer who was likely on the way out but decided to get ahead of it by offering his resignation, according to two White House officials. Dubke is now also helping with the outside political group. 
 
 But a former campaign official said Priebus has been more effective in recent weeks in bringing order to the White House, despite the chaos outside, including Comey’s dramatic testimony before the Senate last week and Trump’s subsequent accusations against him. 
 
 “For the first time in the White House, there’s true structure and discipline and order instilled, despite other distractions that might be out there,” the former official said. 
 
 “They are getting down to the work of governing and moving the ball forward.” 
 
 The White House just wrapped up “Infrastructure Week,” which provided a more focused message about Trump’s legislative agenda — even if it was largely drowned out by Comey’s testimony. And Trump is about to launch “Workforce Development Week,” during which he’ll travel to Wisconsin with his daughter Ivanka on Tuesday before delivering a “major policy speech” at the Department of Labor on Wednesday. 
 
 Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump, cited the firings of former Trump Organization CEO Edward Tracy and Nicholas Ribis, CEO of Trump Atlantic City Associates, as examples of times that Trump made drastic personnel decisions. He likened the firings to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” and called them “sudden.” 
 
 He suggested that if and when Trump removes Priebus, it will be at an opportune time and with a landing pad. 
 
 “I think it would be fair to say, that with the entire Comey controversy, that’s a pretty good reason not to make a change at this exact moment,” Stone said. 
 
 “Even when he lets him go, he’s not going to fire him. He’ll just give him another meaningless post. Because it’s politics and it looks better that way. There’s no reason to offend [Priebus’] friends in the party, so they’ll find a much more important job for him.” 
 
 Priebus was brought on to the White House as a broker between Trump and the Republican establishment, specifically because of his close relationship with Ryan, with whom Trump has reportedly been disenchanted in recent weeks. 
 
 Trump has blamed Priebus for leaks out of the White House that he believes have come from disgruntled RNC staffers whom Preibus brought into the West Wing, two administration officials and three outside advisers said. He also blamed Spicer, who was brought on at Priebus’ behest, for the lack of a full-throated defense for his firing of Comey. 
 
 Many say Trump is unfairly placing the blame on Priebus, who faces an almost impossible task in trying to clean up a White House that has been laden with scandals relating to the Russia probe and the recent firing of Comey. But some point to disorganization even earlier than that, like the botched rollout of the health care bill and travel ban. 
 
 Trump has weighed the idea of moving Priebus to the role of ambassador to Greece, because of his Greek heritage. 
 
 Trump told Bossie that Priebus “will enjoy Greece,” according to two people with knowledge of the comment. 
 
 Another source close to the administration said Trump is aware of the optics of having a chief of staff leaving after only a few months, and does not want Priebus to leave with a shorter tenure than any other White House chief of staff in history. 
 
 Harry S. Truman was the first president to have a chief of staff. The shortest-serving chief of staff since then was James Baker, who served the last five months of the George H.W. Bush administration. Priebus has yet to reach his fifth month. 
 
 Nunberg argued that Trump may feel less comfortable shaking up the West Wing than he did making major changes to the Trump Organization. 
 
 “The White House is different. You can’t make quick changes; it’s an institution. Once someone is gone from there, they’re gone,” Nunberg said. 
 
 “With that said, I think Reince will be there for the long haul.” ||||| Reince Priebus spent his last day as White House chief of staff like nothing was out of the ordinary. 
 
 He held his regular morning meeting, where he talked about the failure of the GOP health care reform bill to pass the Senate early Friday morning, after a fatal "no" vote from Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. 
 
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 On Air Force One up to Long Island, where President Donald Trump gave a speech about the MS-13 gang, Priebus sat at the conference room table going over the top issues of the day. “We were talking about the speech in New York, North Korea, health care, tax reform,” said New York Republican Rep. Peter King, who accompanied Trump. “He was talking, we were talking.” 
 
 By 4:49 p.m., it was over. “I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff,” Trump tweeted from the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, where Priebus still sat waiting in a black SUV. Other aides riding with him hopped into a different car once the tweet posted. His SUV separated from the motorcade and went on a rainy ride through Washington alone. 
 
 Priebus, in an interview on CNN Friday evening, tried to downplay his tensions with Trump, while saying it was his decision to resign. “This isn’t a situation with a bunch of ill will,” he said. “I think the president wanted to go in a different direction. I support him in that.” 
 
 It was an ignominious close to an operatic six months during which Priebus was sidelined from the outset, first by chief strategist Steve Bannon, then by Trump’s children and finally by Anthony Scaramucci, whose arrival last week as communications director heralded the imminent end of Priebus’ tenure. 
 
 But finally it was the absence of progress on Trump’s legislative agenda — health care, taxes, infrastructure — that prompted the president, in consultation with his family, to finally tell people around him it was time “to try a different approach,” said one senior administration official. 
 
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 “It’s hard to overstate how much the family had to do with this,” this person added. 
 
 Over the past week, multiple West Wing aides and people close to the White House have described new levels of dysfunction. 
 
 The day Scaramucci was named, Priebus tried to convince others the two men were friends, but no one in the West Wing believed it. Press secretary Sean Spicer quit, but Priebus stayed, determined to make it a year. Other senior officials said Trump wanted Priebus to get the hint and leave on his own. 
 
 After Scaramucci shredded Priebus in a vulgar rant to The New Yorker, published Thursday just as the health care debate was coming to its fruitless end, Priebus expressed his frustrations inside the White House. But the president took Scaramucci’s side — and Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, went on television to excuse the comments. 
 
 One White House official said Priebus had become so marginalized in the West Wing that people had started questioning his ability “to even perform basic tasks.” 
 
 The official said Priebus’ departure wasn't about any one issue, but a pileup of sorts. “It was only a matter of time, but Trump just wouldn’t pull the trigger,” the official said. 
 
 An aide said Priebus wasn’t available for comment. 
 
 Trump thrived on rivalry and drama in his campaign, and he guaranteed it would continue into his administration when he decided last November to jointly announce that Priebus and Bannon would be joining his West Wing. 
 
 From the start, Priebus — whose presence was intended to give the establishment wing of the Republican Party a line into the White House, and to smooth Trump’s relations with House Speaker Paul Ryan and other GOP leaders on Capitol Hill — was hemmed in, with senior advisers like Bannon, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Kellyanne Conway reporting directly to the president. 
 
 Known for being a well-organized taskmaster at the Republican National Committee, Priebus was perplexed by his famously mercurial boss, who can make spur-of-the-moment decisions based on hallway conversations, associates say. 
 
 The unpredictable nature of the information flow in the White House made him uneasy, several administration officials say. He lost his cool when other West Wing staffers knew things that he didn’t, and he would call people who had spoken to the president to ask them what Trump had told them. He would run from meeting to meeting trying not to miss anything. He would corner people who criticized him publicly and ask them to stop — but admit the criticisms were close to accurate. 
 
 He would rarely leave Trump's side and would rush into the Oval Office when he saw others were in the room. "He would literally sprint," one West Wing official said back in the spring. 
 
 He also tried to control some of the president’s media consumption, to little effect. 
 
 Trump never seemed to fully trust Priebus, who called for him to drop out of the presidential race after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged in October, even recalling the episode in front of senators at the White House in March. And he never fully empowered him, softly undermining him by calling him “Reince-y” and making strange asides, officials said. At one point, he told associates that Priebus would make a good car salesman. At another, he mocked him for expressing excitement when he spotted his house from Air Force One, flying over Wisconsin. 
 
 Trump exacerbated Priebus’ status by frequently complaining about him to other staffers and outside advisers to whom he would ask, “What do you think of Reince?” 
 
 As Priebus’ stock fell, Trump was growing increasingly enamored of Kelly, his secretary of Homeland Security, a retired general who first landed on the administration’s radar after Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who has a friendly relationship not only with Priebus but also with Bannon and Kushner, recommended him early in the transition “for any high-level Cabinet role,” according to a Cotton aide. 
 
 Kelly stepped up to implement the president’s controversial travel ban executive order in January, despite the chaos it created at airports around the country, and has praised Trump for his efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration at the border with Mexico. 
 
 In May, when Trump was under fire for his abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey amid the growing investigation into whether any Trump campaign associates played a role in Russian meddling during the 2016 election, Kelly signaled his support for the president against the media during a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy. “Use that on the press, sir,” Kelly told Trump, who was given a ceremonial saber. 
 
 Priebus’ failure to smooth passage of health care legislation through the GOP-led House in March infuriated the president, according to people close to him, and may have made his departure inevitable. 
 
 After that first health care bill failed to get a vote, his deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh, was ousted. She was never replaced. Communications director Mike Dubke quietly resigned following Trump’s first foreign trip, after Trump criticized him for not fiercely defending the firing of Comey. 
 
 Spicer, who led a communications and press shop of former RNC staffers, was the most high-profile aide to leave, a move that came last Friday after it was clear Scaramucci would be above Spicer in the White House pecking order. His press shop was criticized for fighting for protecting Priebus in the press over other staffers and the president. 
 
 For some, defending him was just an old habit. One senior administration official even called the communications office’s fixation with defending Priebus an “inappropriate use of government funds.” 
 
 Priebus, who has always been obsessed with his media coverage, grew even more attentive to the press in the months after joining the White House. He would ask Spicer to scream about negative tweets, and whenever he caught wind that a negative story about him might be coming, “the whole West Wing practically shuts down,” said one senior administration official. 
 
 Another senior administration official said in June: “If Reince spent as much time worrying about his job as what you all write about his job, we’d all be better off.” 
 
 Earlier in the week, Priebus was bracing for the worst as the Senate struggled to pass its version of an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill. He was left out of crucial meetings on Capitol Hill, according to aides, and left much of the arm-twisting to get votes to Vice President Mike Pence and the legislative affairs shop, as well as to former campaign staffers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. 
 
 GOP aides on the Senate side said that they didn’t want to deal with Priebus because he was considered weak and lacking in influence. “He doesn’t get much respect on the Hill, because we know he doesn't have power in the White House,” said one senior aide. 
 
 By the end, senior staffers stopped taking Priebus seriously — and often skipped his morning meetings. He would beg staffers not to leak, only to find himself accused by Scaramucci of being a leaker. 
 
 Josh Gerstein, Alex Isenstadt, Annie Karni and Andrew Restuccia contributed to this report.
– Rumors of major restructuring of White House staff have been circulating in recent days, and on Tuesday the first shoe may have dropped in the form of Mike Dubke, President Trump's communications director. Axios reports that Dubke offered Trump his resignation on May 18, though he offered to stay on at least until the president's overseas trip had wrapped up. A senior administration official notes Dubke is leaving on friendly footing, and he's still reporting for work—in fact, Politico nabbed him for an interview as he was driving into the White House on Tuesday. It's not clear yet when his last day will be, though he plans to return to the Black Rock Group communications firm once he exits the White House. "The reasons for my departure are personal, but it has been my great honor to serve President Trump and this administration," Dubke said in a Tuesday morning email. Dubke told Politico he was shocked it took nearly two weeks for news of his resignation to get out. Axios notes Dubke's sayonara is just the "start of a wave of changes." Sean Spicer is expected to take on a downplayed role, though it's unclear where the fates of Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner lie. Axios reports Trump is rumored to be considering bringing on "killers," including GOP lobbyist David Urban and former campaign aides David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, the latter being one who "experience suggests … will not only indulge Trump's most combative instincts, but goad them." In other anticipated changes, an official says Trump plans on serving more often as the White House's spokesperson. "He says things exactly the way he wants them to be said," the official notes.