Page 31 - Gate Keeper News Today

He was treated like a junior staffer. was that his fault or was it the fault of the president for not empowering him? did he weaken reince priebus? >> its fascinating. looking back on previous administrations of chief of staff as basically the last person before you get to the president, the gate keeper and maybe part of that is adjusting our own expectations of what a title means. remember, scaramucci put out there that priebus would be fired and a few days later he was. so you know, these are ...

Scaramucci from getting a job in the white house. he was supposed to have a role much earlier on, and i guess maybe that was some of the bad blood. but the idea that reince priebus was brought in to kind of clear the decks, it sounds like there may be more firings to come. >> reporter: staffers and others who reince priebus brought into this white house, theres always been a washington and a new york divide. its actually a trump loyalist and rnc divide here. so you may see some other people leav...

Vice chief of staff general jack keane, former general. nice to see you,. >> thank you, clayton. clayton: past few hours we have been talking about talking about remarkable leadership at the homeland security. to chris stirewalts point. i think he brings up a great point and maybe the reason reince priebus failed he didnt really have access to being able to control the white house. had you people able to book, walk right into the oval office. you dont have people going through him to book things...

Thinking back on all this. one of the reasons i think reince priebus had such a tough job because the chief of staffs office is in the west wing corner, not far from the oval office at all. its intended to be within a 10 second walk to the oval office, to keep an eye on who goes in, to be the ultimate gate keeper. reince priebus could not be the gate keeper because the president was talking to everyone on the phone. he had everyone elses ear. and at the end, anderson, for months im told, the pre...

President is taking place. preferably before. youd like toyota be during because youd like to be there for many of the meetings. at a minimum respect the chief of staffs burden enough to tell the chief of staff you talked to the president and this is what we talked about and the chief of staff can get on and talk. i was fortunate to work in a white house where the president backed me up on that kind of discipline. he was wonderful at making sure that -- it wasnt that i was quote the gate keeper ...

>> from the very beginning the president has been undermining the authority of the chief of staff by allowing others to come directly to him. to go around the chief of staff and to posit himself as the gate keeper of his own door. and that has made it difficult for reince priebus to put in the kind of structure to avoid the very thing were sitting here talking about tonight. and that will be his undoing. >> when president trump was trying to make a deal with comey, he told him to get out of the ...

Underlies this whole thing is, did the president know about this meeting? did he know about the context which this meeting happened? there were a couple things in the e-mails that emerged in the last couple day that is struck out at me. one of the most important, i think, is this idea that don jr.s intermediary, who conveyed to him the russian government wanted to help his father also asked and suggested that he might present this information directly to trump himself, through trumps sort of sec...

Mild endorsement of his son. he ed the same kind of things about michael flynn before he was out. and i think just saying hes a high-quality person is almost throwing him under the bus. i would have defended my own son far more vigorously the idea that hes transparent to me that was an atta boy like you did the right thing, i think this was something he was directed to do. >> the white house has said now the president knew nothing with this until recently. in this e-mail chain donald trump, jr. ...

Their job thats not part of his life experience. so he knows perfectly well when hes working the refs. he finds it hard to believe anybody could have a moral come pass. >> what would you do if you were u.s. attorney in that position and you had gotten a third call like he did from the president, would you have taken a similar course of action? >> i would have made very careful contemporaneous notes and i would have referred it upstream to the department of justice to, probably, the deputy attorn...

Anybody could have a moral come pass. >> what would you do if you were u.s. attorney in that position and you had gotten a third call like he did from the president, would you have taken a similar course of action? >> i would have made very careful contemporaneous notes and i would have referred it upstream to the department of justice to, probably, the deputy attorney general who usually is the gate keeper for the attorney general to say i dont know whats going on, guys, im getting weird calls ...