Donald Trump Considers Major Shake-up of Senior White House Team

Mr. Trump is specifically evaluating whether to keep his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, in their current positions.

Two people close to the White House said Mr. Trump has been talking to confidants about Mr. Priebus’s performance and has asked for names of possible replacements.
Mr. Trump is “trying out different names with his friends,” one of those people said.

.. Messrs. Kushner and Cohn spring from an internationalist, establishment wing that isn’t a natural fit with Mr. Bannon’s more pugnacious nationalism.

.. The Syrian strike also has elevated the influence of senior military officers in the administration. Those officers have been courting Mr. Kushner
.. Mr. Trump as a more centrist figure to the degree that Mr. Bannon is marginalized while aides such as Mr. Cohn ascend
.. Possible candidates for Mr. Priebus’s job include Mr. Cohn
.. Mr. Cohn has told the president he would be an eager and able chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.
.. The president himself at times has fueled the internal acrimony, according to people familiar with the matter. He started asking friends to rate the performance of his top aides following the failure in March to pass a health-care bill
.. Mr. Cohn has suggested the possibility of a carbon tax, which Mr. Bannon views as anathema to the “economic nationalism”

Ned Ryun: Trump WH Breaking into Two Factions — National Populists vs. Liberal NYC Democrats

“Since inauguration, it was really about four camps,” Ryun replied. “It was the Kushner camp, it was the Bannon camp, it was the Reince camp, and it was the Pence camp. But I’m starting to think, based off what I was hearing from yesterday and then reading reports this morning, that this is becoming actually more of two camps – that it really is the national populists, really led by Bannon, versus, quite frankly – there’s no other way to describe them – the liberal New York City set that have come in.”

.. “God bless them, they’re part of the Trump family, but let’s not kid ourselves: they are part of the Manhattan liberal set,” he said of the latter duo.

.. “The people that voted for Donald Trump voted for very specific things,” he noted. “They do want to see a wall. They want to see immigration dealt with. They want to see healthcare reform. They want to see tax reform. They want to see all of these things.”

.. “I have real concerns, not only about the New York liberal set that has come into the White House. … I am more and more concerned about the Goldman Sachs people that have come into the administration,” Ryun professed.

He said they have a “different worldview than the American people that voted Trump in.”

.. my hope is that Trump will say, ‘I know what got me in. I know what brought me to the White House. Steve Bannon is really the lead cheerleader on that front. Keep Steve close. Listen to Steve.

.. I really do think we’re going to get something done with health care. There’s going to be a massive step in the right direction. I do think we’ve got a real shot at tax reform.”

.. “If the other guys win, I guarantee you Bannon’s out, Reince is out, Spicer’s out, the corporate New York set is in.”

Internal White House battles spill into Treasury

Already, critics note that Mnuchin has selected another Democratic donor, Craig Phillips, for a top position within the department. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that he supports parts of the controversial Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from making some bets with their own money — an anathema to conservatives who want to scrap stricter banking laws.

.. “For conservatives, Mnuchin is a missed opportunity because he is not conservative. He will not drive the kind of tax reform we want, nor will he be strong on fixing Dodd-Frank,” the donor added.

.. Allies of Cohn and Powell, both former Goldman Sachs executives like Mnuchin, say their opponents, led by Bannon, are attempting to plant stories about Cohn and those around him to discredit their standing with conservatives and with Trump himself.

.. These include allegations that Cohn is pushing a carbon tax and for keeping the U.S. in the Paris climate accords and was behind a visit to the White House by Zeke Emanuel, an architect of Obamacare.

.. Cohn has proven himself among the few West Wing advisers able and willing to contradict the president. One person close to the matter said the NEC director regularly pushes back in meetings with the Trump. “It’s always done in a respectful, ‘Can I just make my point?’ kind of way. He’s not interrupting him,” this person said.

.. Cohn has also been positioning himself as the leader of any upcoming tax reform process. This month, he met with Ways and Means Republicans and his top tax policy adviser, Shahira Knight, to give a broad overview of how the White House views tax reform

.. “We believe in free trade. We are in one of the largest markets in the world. …Trade has been good for us. It has been good for other people,” he said. “Having said that, we want to re-examine certain agreements.”

.. once the health care fight is over they should be able to take center stage.”

.. Advocates of the Bannon wing, which also includes senior adviser Stephen Miller, argue that pursuing this kind of centrist approach, either at Treasury or inside the White House, would be a rejection of Trump’s voters who elected him on a clear platform of changing trade policy to benefit Americans, building a wall with Mexico, cracking down on illegal immigration and preventing travel to the United States from nations associated with terrorism.

.. Conservatives have applauded a few of Mnuchin recent picks for top Treasury jobs, including David Malpass, a former Bear Stearns economist, for the undersecretary of international affairs and Drew Maloney, Rep. Tom DeLay’s former legislative director, for the assistant secretary for legislative affairs. Among others, Treasury also added Dan Kowalski, Stephen Miller’s deputy on the Trump campaign, as a counselor.

Report: Steve Bannon Says American Health Care Act ‘Written by the Insurance Industry’

White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has privately expressed concern that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) betrays the populist voters who put Donald Trump in the White House.

And in the hall of mirrors that is Washington, the big winner to emerge out of the health-care debacle could be Steve Bannon. That’s because Bannon has been waging war against Ryan for years. For Bannon, Ryan is the embodiment of the “globalist-corporatist” Republican elite. A failed bill would be Bannon’s best chance yet to topple Ryan and advance his nationalist-populist economic agenda.

.. Bannon said that he’s unhappy with the Ryan bill because it “doesn’t drive down costs” and was “written by the insurance industry.” While the bill strips away many of Obamacare’s provisions, it does not go as far as Bannon would wish to “deconstruct the administrative state” in the realm of health care.

.. He’s told people that Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn — a West Wing rival — has run point on it.