Nick Ayers, the Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence, was seen as the frontrunner to replace Trump’s departing Chief of Staff John Kelly.

https://www.apnews.com/7a5a0eb3f15c4f4a9f7fd34680c1bc68

White House officials were caught off guard when President Trump and Nick Ayers, whose selection by Trump was believed to be a done deal, could not come to terms.

Ayers turned down the job with Trump proclaiming they could not reach an agreement on his length of service.

Ayers and Trump had discussed the job for months.

Ayers had long planned to leave the administration at the end of the year.

Ayers was willing to serve in an interim basis through next spring.

Trump wanted a 2-year commitment and wants his next chief of staff to hold the job through the 2020 presidential election.

With Ayers out of the running, Trump is considering other candidates for the post.

Those being considered are Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who ran for President against Trump.

Most of those under consideration are very happy with their present jobs

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

It is obvious that Trump is scrambling to find another Chief of Staff, considered one of the most powerful positions in the White House.

Outgoing Chief of Staff John Keller was able to impose some discipline on the President and White House personnel, until he quickly got on Trump’s bad side.

The biggest problem is, can Trump find anyone within his own administration who is actually loyal to him, who does not think he is a “moron” as expressed by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or an “idiot” as expressed by John Kelly in private, and who does not think he has any business being President.

On September 6, 2018, The New York Times’s took the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay from a “senior White House Official” in President Donald Trump’s administration whose identity is known only to the New York Times.

The entire New York Times letter can be read hear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

The author wrote in part:

“many of the senior officials in [Trump’s] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.”

The letter talks about the bright spots and accomplishments of the Trump presidency as “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more. … But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”

Notwithstanding, the author of the letter wrote that Trump is amoral.

It was stunning that a senior official for the President of the United States would say:

“The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making. … Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. … the president’s leadership style … is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective. … Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back. There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next.”

At the time the New York Times letter was published, Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff Nick Ayer’s was viewed as the biggest suspect as the one who wrote the letter.

The rationale for the New York Times keeping the author of the letter anonymous was that the person’s job would be jeopardized by disclosing who wrote it.

The use of the term “Senior Official” was no doubt carefully chosen by the New York Times.

The term Senior Official could mean a Cabinet Secretary, a Deputy Secretary, a member of the National Security Council or for that matter a high-ranking speech writer or press relations person.

Some news media outlets went so far as to suggest that Vice President Michael Pence, Pence’s Chief of Staff Nick Ayers, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote the letter, and all denied it at the time.

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/6/17826830/new-york-times-trump-official-anonymous-oped

It is obvious who ever in fact wrote the piece is articulate, knows how to write an op ed piece, has dealt with the New York Times in the past and had the ability to get it to the paper on their own without having to use an assistant or secretary and was able to secure a commitment from the paper not to release their name.

Washington Post’s sources called Trump’s reaction to the letter as “volcanic,” and news agency Politico source said the White House went into “total meltdown.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/6/17826830/new-york-times-trump-official-anonymous-oped

Trump went on the rampage to find out who the writer was, using the word “treason”, but he never found out who wrote the letter.

Treason is not an act against a President, but against the Country.

Trump’s use of the word “treason” shows just how ignorant he is of our United States Constitution which defines “treason” as acts of a citizen leveling war against the United States or adhering to enemies of the United States and giving aid or comfort the enemies of the United States. (See Constitution of the United States, Article 3, Section 3).

It is clear that the American public elected someone who is emotionally unstable and not mentally nor morally fit to be President of the United States.

It is at the point that Trump has now done more damage to this country as well as his own party than anyone could have ever dreamed or imagined.

It may take years as was the case with “Deep Throat” who brought Richard Nixon down, but I have no doubt the American Public will learn one day who the anonymous writer is.

Nick Ayers probably feels he will be Chief of Staff soon enough once Trump is force from office and is gone and Mike Pence becomes President.

Any one who does not think things will get any worse is kidding themselves and Nick Ayers and others within his own administration are betting on it.