Trump struggles to regain footing after staff defections

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump sought to impose order in his White House in the face of a widening Russia probe, ending a tumultuous week by appointing a new lead lawyer, sidelining his old one and hiring a new communications director as two top spokesmen quit in protest.
The changes leave Trump with new leaders on his legal and communications teams heading into a week when the highest-ranking White House official so far will appear before a congressional committee. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner will be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned after news broke that Trump had hired financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. A day earlier, the spokesman for his legal team, Mark Corallo, resigned after Trump appointed attorney John Dowd his lead lawyer. Marc Kasowitz, the previous leader of Trump’s legal team, will play a diminished role, Dowd said.
Fractures in the White House emerged immediately. Dowd said in an interview that Trump would not seek to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller, almost at the same time Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway did just that, describing his investigation on Fox News as “a hoax” and criticizing his deputies as Democratic partisans.

Frustrated Spokesmen
Spicer and Corallo both left out of frustration with Trump’s political and legal strategy, according to a person familiar with their decisions. Corallo declined to discuss his departure and Spicer didn’t respond to attempts to contact him.
Spicer said on Fox News’s “Hannity” that Trump didn’t want him to resign. “He wanted to bring some new folks in to help rev up the communications operation, and after reflection, my decision was to recommend to the president that I give Anthony and Sarah a clean slate to start from,” Spicer said.
In his first televised appearance in his new job, Scaramucci said that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Spicer’s principal deputy, would become press secretary. Scaramucci lived up to his reputation as a polished performer at the briefing room podium. He deftly wished Spicer well —“I hope he goes on to make a tremendous amount of money”— and brushed away his own old criticisms of the president, while mixing ample charm and self-deprecation into his remarks. “He brings it up every 15 seconds,” Scaramucci said of a 2015 television appearance in which he called Trump “a hack.” Scaramucci said he’s repeatedly apologized for “one of the biggest mistakes I made because I was an inexperienced person in politics. He’s never forgotten it. You’ve never forgotten it.”

Television Appearances
Scaramucci, 53, is expected to appear frequently on television speaking on Trump’s behalf, a role he’s voluntarily filled for months. He was a campaign fundraiser for Trump and regular adviser during the presidential transition who’s been considered for multiple jobs in the administration, most recently ambassador to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He faces an especially difficult test as communications director, a position he described as responsible for restoring Trump’s credibility and respect with the press and the public. Trump’s job approval was 36 percent in the most recent Gallup poll conducted July 17-19. No president has been less popular in his first six months in office since the advent of modern polling.
“There has been an arbitrage spread between how well we are doing and how well some of you guys think we are doing and we are going to work hard to close that spread,” Scaramucci said.
One person familiar with the changes said that Trump offered Scaramucci the communications job out of a sense of loyalty to his surrogate, whom he calls “the Italian kid.” Scaramucci is not expected to perform the traditional duties of a communications director, such as planning messaging campaigns for the president’s policies—in part why Spicer, to whom those tasks would have fallen, decided to leave, the person said.