White House chief of staff Mark Meadows listens during a meeting about the coronavirus in the White House on April 29 as senior adviser Jared Kushner looks on. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo
When the White House’s top domestic policy job came open in recent weeks, newly installed chief of staff Mark Meadows was quick to suggest a surprising name: Stephen Miller.
The proposal, described by three people familiar with the situation, would place Miller, the hard-charging force behind the administration’s immigration policies, in a more well-defined role as Meadows worked to reshape the West Wing.
But Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, intervened. He suggested others he had worked with at the White House. Eventually Derek Lyons, who is viewed as close to Kushner, became the new acting director of the Domestic Policy Council.
The episode provided an early and important lesson for Meadows: The White House is rife with competing power centers, and Kushner is often the most powerful force behind Trump himself.
Six weeks into his tenure as chief of staff, Meadows is adjusting to the ways of a White House, where the president often announces policy changes with little discussion and many decisions become opportunities for various factions to advance their agendas. And Kushner is the figure who has consistently loomed large over those choices, according to nine current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House, most of whom did not want to use their name to speak freely.
“Those are the realities,” said a Republican who speaks to the president. “If Jared’s role has changed, it has only increased. His portfolio has grown. The president trusts him implicitly.”
Kushner’s power has been growing since midway through Trump’s term when Meadows’ predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, became acting chief of staff with a vow to let Trump be Trump. Meadows had been expected to take a more hands-on approach than Mulvaney, but some people in and around the White House say his attempts to assert himself have run into Kushner.
It’s a learning curve many chiefs of staff experience.
“You’ve got to tiptoe around the White House to make sure you’re not only … not offending the president, but not offending somebody who is close to the president,” said Leon Panetta, President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff. “You could wind up having both of them blame you for things that go wrong. It just makes it very difficult. That job is tough enough without having to worry about personal relationships.”
A White House official, who declined to speak on the record, said Meadows came in with a good understanding of this White House, having spent considerable time in the West Wing over the last three years as a close adviser to the president.
“Internal dynamics like this have not surprised him — and he and Jared work very well together,” the official said.
Meadows follows Mulvaney, John Kelly and Reince Priebus as chief of staff. Each had their own style but ultimately struggled to control Trump or the fractious White House. Trump eventually tired of each, sidelining them for months before firing them. Trump allies say they are hopeful Meadows will make it through the end of the first term, a tall task in a White House that has had a record number of turnovers.
“If you’re the fourth chief of staff, you don’t go in there thinking it’s going to be different,” a former Trump aide said. “Everything is going to touch Jared.”
Meadows had a prior relationship with the president, helping his staff push through legislation and strategizing with the White House on how to fight impeachment last year. As a result, he entered the White House far tighter with Trump and Kushner than his predecessors.
“Mark has had a relationship with not only the president, but staff, including Jared, which makes a transition to this job a lot easier because it’s building on a pre-existing relationship,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary who remains close to the White House.
Yet any chief of staff who hasn’t been with the president since the pre-White House days will inevitably have to compete with those who have known the commander in chief for years.
Andy Card, President George W. Bush’s first chief of staff, recalled navigating the president’s relationship with aides, including strategist Karl Rove and communications director Karen Hughes, who both had long histories with the president.
“There are always people on the White House staff who have unique relationships with the president,” Card said.
Meadows assumed his role in March after resigning from his House seat representing North Carolina. He came aboard just after the coronavirus outbreak took hold in the country and the administration began to scramble to send medical supplies and testing equipment to the states.
Since then, Meadows has had a hand in a number of initiatives — with varying degrees of success.
Meadows — and other senior aides, including Kushner — at one point proposed a new economic task force. Trump opted instead for a list of more than 200 executives that he invited to conference calls focused on reopening the country.
A founding member of the House’s hardline conservative Freedom Caucus, Meadows had more success helping negotiate a deal to replenish a coronavirus relief program for small businesses, even earning praise from Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor.
But on testing and medical supplies, it was Kushner who took a leading role — efforts that have received mixed reviews.
“What goes through Jared is what Jared cares about,” a former senior administration official said. “He doesn’t meddle in stuff that he doesn’t care about.”
During his three-plus years working for Trump, Kushner has garnered the most attention for successfully pushing a criminal justice bill to relax strict federal sentencing guidelines, as well as for his long-stalled proposals to establish Middle East peace and overhaul the immigration system.
Behind the scenes, Kushner’s influence has extended far beyond those issues to everything from trade negotiations with China to building a wall on the border with Mexico.
“People realize when they go work in the White House, Jared is the shadow chief of staff,” said a former Senate Republican staffer who is close to the White House. “He’s family. He’s been with the president since the campaign.”
A Republican close to the White House says Trump doesn’t listen to Kushner all of the time, noting it can depend on his son-in-law’s recent successes or failures. “Like everything there, it ebbs and flows,” the person said. The recent spate of negative stories about Kushner relying on volunteers with little expertise for the coronavirus response didn’t help, the person said.
That said, Kushner’s fingerprints are all over major decisions during the coronavirus.
Three weeks ago, after Trump tweeted he would suspend immigration into the United States during the pandemic, it was Kushner who persuaded the president in an Oval Office meeting to carve out business-friendly exceptions for hundreds of thousands of temporary workers, including seasonal farm workers, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
A conservative close to the White House encouraged Meadows to be more assertive in Kushner’s areas, arguing Kushner’s policies are not in line with the conservative base that propelled Trump to the White House. If the administration proceeds with Kushner’s policies, the person said, Trump’s reelection bid could fall short.
“Meadows understands this, they don’t,” the person said referring to Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, also a senior adviser.
Another Republican who speaks to Trump said Meadows hasn’t yet brought enough of his own staff with him to be allies in the White House. Thus far, Meadows has installed just a handful of staffers, including a deputy, a scheduler and a communications adviser. Conversely, Mulvaney brought in more than a dozen aides, including an attorney and national security adviser.
Meadows has tried to make his staffing mark in other ways, most notably in the press shop, where he pushed out press secretary Stephanie Grisham and installed several staffers he had worked with previously.
The moves left others worried that a broader shakeup was coming to the West Wing. But three people familiar with the situation say the changes also came at the urging of Kushner, who had complained in recent months that the communications and press officers were too passive.
“Jared was the force behind that,” a former senior administration official said. “But he pushed Meadows to do it.”
The White House official said Meadows shared Kushner’s goal “to be more proactive in the press, institute more long term planning and reestablish a better relationship with reporters.”
Meadows is next positioned to put his stamp on the legislative affairs office, the White House’s main conduit with Capitol Hill. Eric Ueland, the legislative affairs director, appears poised to take a job at the State Department, and Mike McKenna, one of Ueland’s deputies, has already left.
Over at the Domestic Policy Council, however, Meadows didn’t get his way after floating Miller’s name. Giving Miller the DPC job would have technically been a demotion for the senior policy aide who has had a direct channel to the president on a variety of subjects.
Meadows had also contemplated reorganizing the speech-writing team — a stand-alone office led by Miller — but got pushback.
“It is a Jared choice,” a senior administration official involved in the deliberations said last week as the decision was being made. “Meadows does not seem to be in it at all.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere denied that Miller has been or is under consideration for the DPC job. Miller didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In the end, it was a microcosm of the broader lesson for any new Trump chief of staff: You may have one of the most senior roles, but that doesn’t mean you have the final say.
“Why didn’t he realize that before?” wondered one of the Republicans close to Trump.
Daniel Lippman and Gabby Orr contributed to this report.
