good evening and welcome to the end of president's end of hero's week. and there's more breaking news tonight. about 24 hours after it was revealed the new white house communications director called him an if'ing schizophrenic,

reince priebus is out as chief of staff, general john kelly is in. before we get into the details of how this happened, let's look at frankly the bazar things this week. jared kushner appeared before the senate committee admitting he had four meetings with russians. on the same day the president gave a speech that boy scouts later had to apologize for. in the same vein the suffolk county police department distanced itself from a speech where he encouraged officers to be rougher with people they arrest. tuesday the president said on camera that he was disappointed in attorney general jeff sessions for recusing himself for the russian investigate. he followed that up announcing that transgender people are now banned from the military. something that military said the next day means nothing for now. and yesterday we heard more than we thought we would hear from

the mouth of anthony skacaramuc. here's part of what he said about reince priebus in a phone call to cnn yesterday, insisting they were bros, not tight bros like he and the president are, but in a more biblical sense. >> as you know from the italian expression, the fish stinks from the head down. and i can tell you two fish that don't stink and that's me and the president. i don't like the activity in the white house, i don't like what they're doing to my friend, to the president of the united states or their fellow colleagues in the west wing. if you want to talk about the chief of staff, we have had odds, we have had differences. when i said we were brothers from the podium, that's because we're rough on each other. some brothers are looik cane and able. >> cain actually killed able.

happy american heroes week. and the senate voted against the bill to repeal parts of obamacare. but first a short time ago reince priebus spoke with wolf blitzer. >> why did you make that important decision to resign? >> it's something i always talked to the president about and i've always said to him and he always agreed with me. anytime either one of us think that we need make a change or move in a different direction, let's just talk about it and get it done and so i think the president thought about that and we talked about it yesterday and i resigned and he accepted my resignation but this is about the president, it's about moving his agenda forward. i think he's made a smart decision with general kelly and i think he's going to do a great job. >> but why did you resign? i understand you told the president you wanted to resign,

he accepted your resignation yesterday but was there a series of issues? was there one thing that came up and you said i no longer can do this? >> i think the president wanted to go a different direction. i support him in that. and like i said a couple weeks ago i said the president has a right to change directions. the president has a right to hit a reset button. i think it's a good time to the reset button and i think it was something that i think the white house needs. i think it's healthy and i support him in it. >> was he not happy with the -- >> i think bringing fresh people is a good thing. so, look, he has the best political instincts. hang on a second. he knows, i think intuitively

when things need to change. i've seen it now for a year 1/2 on this wild ride with the president that i love being a part of but he intuitively determined that it was time to do something differently. and i think he's right. >> but it's only been six months, not very long. when you say he wanted to do things differently, tell us precisely why he wants to do things differently and why you concluded that didn't include you. >> the president is a professional. and i'm a professional. and professional people don't discuss private conversations in public. >> what was the impact the new white house communications director? you saw the interview he granted the new yorker magazine. he called you some awful things, including a paranoid schizophrenic. he said your days were numbered, you were about to leave. he said at one point reince

priebus would resign soon and that he expected priebus to launch a campaign against him. what was your reaction? >> no reaction. i'm not going to respond to it. i'm not going to get into the mud on those sorts of things. the president and i had an understanding. we've talked about this many times. and we ultimately decided that yesterday was a good day and that we would work together and i think general kelly's a good pick. i support what the president did. and obviously i think it's a good thing for the white house. >> but why were you opposed to anthony scaramucci even getting a job in the white house? you saw how bitter he was, how angry he was at you in that ininterview. >> i'm not getting into that, wolf. look, it's over. i'm moving on. i support the president and i support john kelly and the president's agenda.

so tatsz hat's all you're going get from me on that to. i'm not going to get into the individual personal stuff. >> he was also very angry that white house chief strategist. i can't even lead to words he uttered about steve bannon but you think he could stay in the white house with scaramucci now? >> that's going to be up to john kelly but i will say steve's doing a great job. he is a brilliant guy who only cares about the president's agenda. he thinks about it 24 hours a day. never quits. he's a great asset to this president and so and a dear friend. my hats off to steve bannon. >> can you clear up the other charge. it was a bitter charge that scaramucci levelled against you that you're a leaker and you're not that loyal to the president. you've got your own agenda. he made bitter accusations against you, specifically the

leaking. are you the leaker in the white house? >> that's ridiculous. wolf, come on, give me a break. >> why not respond? >> because it it doesn't honor the president. i'm going to honor the president every day. i'm going to honor his agenda and i'm going to honor our country and i'm not going to get into all of this personal stuff. >> priebus a short time ago. we have new details of what went on reporting from the white house on a very busy friday night. what are your sources saying about how everything went down? was this really a mutual decision? >> i don't think something like this can be a mutual decision when we're talking about the president replacing his chief of staff. he also said he gave the president his resignation yesterday but what we had been hearing is that the president and also people close to him have just been growing frustrated with reince priebus in the chief of staff role. they believed he was no longer serving the best interest of the presidents but that he also

wasn't being very effective in shepherding the president's agenda on capitol hill. he was convinced be people around him that he needed an old washington hand to guide him through the beginning of his administration. but 350people, including his ow family members came to believe hawaii really wasn't filling that role. it may have been a somewhat amicable split at the end. but certainly it was a decision by the president that he wanted to go a different direction and choose a general for that role. >> priebus didn't want to address scaramucci's comments for obvious reasons. do we know had you much scaramucci and not just his comments but stuff he's done since he's got there and his very arrival, how much that played into the departure? >> it seems it forced everyone's hand in terms of the timing.

we know general kelly's name has been in the works for a while. it has really grown more heated in recent weeks and days. one of the things i think was telling about the things anthony scaramucci has said about reince priebus on our air for instance just yesterday, he said those comments were sanctioned by president trump, that he spoke with the president before he went on cnn and essentially accuseds reince priebus of being a leaker and said the chief of staff could speak for himself. i think it forced these divisions into public. and remember scaramucci and priebus had their own fraught history. so as soon as he was brought on, people were waiting for the tensions to boil over. and maybe surprised it happened this quickly. was there any indication that he had already resigned at that

point? >> in fact throughout the day supporters and close allies of the chief of staff were saying there's nothing to these rumors. there's nothing factual about this at all. he's going to remain as chief of staff and there's a lot of reason to believe he thought that when the day went out. he had not informed any of his allies. he did not tell speaker paul ryan that this was on the verge of happening. so there is a sense of the moment that this was revealed about 5:00 or so when the president announced this, then allies of reince priebus were telling us all day long something was happening. i've talked to several officials who are skeptical of that version of events. they believe he was trying to hold on, they believe he was trying to remain in this position. he thought he could weather the storm but simply that was not to be and as they look back, they believe at least some of his

allies believe scaramucci was brought in to be a hitman if you will. it's only been a week since anthony scaramucci's been here. so certainly a big change in seven days. >> and that's fascinating the idea he was brought in to be a hitman in your words. reince priebus, from all the reporting, tried to stop angtsany scaramucci from getting a job in the white house. he was supposed to have a role much earlier on and that was some of the bad blood but the idea he was brought in to clear the decks, it sounds like there might be more firings to come. >> i think there may be in terms of people aligned with the rnc crowd. that's the republican national committee, staffers and others who he brought into the white house. there's always been a wash washington and a new york divide. so i think you may see some other people leaving. but anderson, i was struck

thinking back on all this. one of the reasons i think reince priebus had such a tough job because the chief of staff's office is in the west wing corner, not far from the oval office at all. it's 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 else's ear. and at the end, anderson, for months i'm told, the president viewed the chief of staff as weak, someone he did not want to be in the same room with him at times. so it became untenable. in many respects it's aremazingt lashed this long . >> gloria. >> you know, i've been told that

the president has been seriously considering whether he wants to keep steve bannon over at the white house, anderson. and that he has spoken -- one of the things that has saved steve bannon is that he spoke to conservatives who said to him don't do it. don't get rid of steve bannon because it's going to hurt you with your base and now we have a situation where both bannon and riens, who were in alliance. bannon remains. and now the question remains about how scaramucci and bannon are going to make peace with each other. and how they're going to deal with each other and whether they'll be able to work well together because rience and bannon ended up working well together. the president has been expressing unhappiness with steve bannon as well. we know his son in law, jared kushner has been expressing unhappiness but for now it seems

bannon will remain. >> reince priebus kept saying to wolf that the president wants to go in a different direction but couldn't describe what the different direction is. for all we know there is no new direction. it's simply a dissatisfaction with reince priebus. >> and it's at odds with the notion that direction that they had been going for six months is a successful as riens or the president was trying to describe it. that line stuck out to me too, anderson. and this is why, at the -- you laid it out that beginning. and it was about exposing a white house that seems incapacitated. totally dysfunctional. not able to execute on an agenda because of all the various items you mentioned just in this week and what we saw with the change in the white house chief of staff, that may go some distance when john kelly gets in there to calm some of the waters

underneath but this is all about the person in the oval office. he has proven himself to be impulsive. taking tons of streams of information and talking to as many people as possible. that is going to be the biggest challenge for john kelly. you're dealing with the very same person in the oval office who doesn't seem inclined to change his behavior. >> anthony scaramucci said that fish stinks from the head and it became like three different fishes from three different heads. but to david's point, john kelly comes in, a marine, a good orcinizer. but is that enough in this white house where the organization is disorganization. it's intentionally all these kids of the president have and in-laws have the direct ear of the president. it's unlike any organization of any white house in recent history. >> right. well, look. as has been pointed out, this

was a catastrophic week that capped off a turbulent six months and the problem is that the president is the author of a lot of that turbulence. through his tweets, his statements. and you wonder how general kelly -- it seems like a culture clash because he's coming from the military, he's used to a hierarchy. he's used to order and it makes sense after all of this chaos and frankly failure that they want to bring in someone who will bring some order to chaos but can he if the president doesn't cooperate? the president just this week as you pointed out, issued a significant order relative to the military on transgender service people and the military chiefs did not know about it. is that going to stop under general kelly? is he going to be aware of what the president is tweeting at 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning?

or more of the same? and how will he tolerate that? second, will he have absolute control over the white house staff? scaramucci said he didn't report to the chief of staff, that he reported only to the president. if that's the case, i think it's going to be very uncomfortable for general kelly. no white house works -- i had a long standing relationship with barack obama before he became president of the united states. i had many conversations with him but there was never any doubt that when i was there in the two years, rahm emmanuel was the chief of staff and ultimately the authority in the white house. that is not the case here and without that, it's very hard to bring order to chaos. >> dachow do you see scaramucci role? is it as a hitman as was talked about earlier to clear the decks? he fired another glinked to the

rnc earlier. is it basically now getting to be kind of a kabal of trump loyalists? >> look, i think scaramucci understands what the president wants. the president wants a pug nations person out there who's slugging away for him and on the things he cares about. on things like leaks. and scaramucci picks that right up and he was slugging away and there's no indication that the president was unhappy about that. the president hasn't expressed himself at all on that, nor have his spokes people. it may be if he comes to believe scaramucci is a reliability, he will revamp his thinking and scaramucci will have problems but right now it seems to me he more than anybody has doped out what disturbs the president and

he's decided to be the pug nations champion the president feels he's lacked. >> and also in this white house if people get -- people other than the president get too much attention, is that something the president doesn't like. >> that's true but i think what we witnessed in the last 48 hours is you had two people at war with each other, they've been at war for months but now they were both working in the white house. one of them went out and completely mowed down the other in public. and a day later the guy that got mowed down in public in pretty crude ways has been fired. so what less ones does that teach you about working for president trump, about going public against your enemies, adopting a trump-like style? i think if you're anthony scaramucci you're feeling pretty good tonight. you just won the war without barely firing a shot.

rience is on the way out and you have the confidence that your job is secure and by the way it's being reported that there's no change in his status. he'll continue to report to the president. so pretty good day for him. there's a reason someone is called the chief of staff. it's borrowed from the military. eisenhower instituted the sort of military style structure in the white house and most successful presidents have had that strong chief of staff to channel all the information and to make decisions about staffing and as david axelrod pointed out, he still reported to the chief of staff. he report tlooed through the chf staff and presidents that have used this multipower center

style of staffing usually get into trouble. now, that probably puts too much blame on simple structural staffing issues. at the end of the day the dysfunction is about donald trump and his management style and personal style and color me skeptical. i'm a little skeptical bringing in any single staffer can fix what's wrong over there. >> we don't know what the chain of command is going to be. but you have to assume that general kelly would have asked about it. and would have asked about who reports to whom because after all he is a general. and if we've learned anything about donald trump, we've learned he doesn't like people he considers to be weak. and he thought reince priebus is weak. one of the reasons he's been so angry at jeff sessions is that he recused himself. and he thought that recusal was

weak. so he's looking at the general as a strong person and perhaps someone he regards as peer and somebody he might be able to go to for advice and take that advice, which perhaps he doesn't feel like he has had in this white house. will he listen to him? wloo knows. >> david, axelrod, the definition of strength and weakness in this white house is so fascinating. the idea that being bombastic is strength but a guy like reince priebus who's offered multiple opportunities to bad mouth too, respond with fire or harsh words for anthony scaramucci chooses not to do that and tries to lead in an elegant way. that's viewed as weakness. one wonders if he had called in

right after anthony scaramucci had called in and bashed back if the president would view that as strength. >> it's interesting. the president brought in a general and he left as a good soldier. but i have to say i think we all know donald trump is a very narcissistic guy and i think strength is something he sees in himself and his style is very much replicated -- i call scaramucci mini me. he is another vurshz of trump and trump probably likes that reflection. i just want to make one point on gloria's reporting. it would be very, very dangerous for the president at a time when the right is very unhappy with him and his treatment of jeff sessions. that would look like a total cupitchilation in their minds to the wall street republicans and

over the populous republicans. i would think they would want to think twice about that. >> i saw some people asking earlier today and maybe as more of a hypothetical but the idea of is this a chance for the president to move jeff sessions over to the department of homeland security and put it in somebody else's attorney general. i think that is in the realm of hypothetical. is it a way of getting rid of sessions from the doj without having to fire him because as david axelrod was just saying i think one of the reasons this week was so significant is i think it's the first time we saw significant cracks emerge between the president and some of his base, someone in his own party, cohorts. some of the base of support. i just mean in the way that conservative media and conservatives on the hill push back what he was doing with jeff sessions.

in the way we saw some republicans break with him on health care. there were moments where it was emerging that way. so to get rid of bannon in a time like that would be tough but perhaps the opening at dhs he can play a little chess game. we'll see if donald trump avails himself there's going to be a cabinet meeting on monday. it will be very interesting to see chief of staff kelly handle that meeting on his first day on the job and if jeff sessions is sitting there and the relationship between him and the president. >> he said he offered his resignation yesterday. we don't know what time yesterday if in fact it was yesterday. do you have any idea your reporting of priebus referring to him as a f'ing schizophrenic? >> i don't. i was a little surprised. yesterday some people close to riens were telling me that

frankly the political fallout from the scaramucci interview this week may have saved him some time. one person said maybe it bought him six more months and rience and people around him were priding them schselves on not g to public with these fights. and of course that bill met its ultimate fate at i think 2:30 in the morning. so this means that he resigned before he knew the outcome. it would make lot more sense to me that health care failing made rience decide my big project failed. the president needs someone else. i feel we don't quite have the full story about the final events. >> i don't understand why there's all this bewilderment as to why priebus resigned. you read that story that ryan

wrote and you hear that interview that scaramucci did with chris cuomo and they may have well have rolled up hand carts and the acne movers to reince priebus's office. and then when the health care bill went down, i think that certainly sealed his fate. >> yes. it may have sealed it but a obviously this was in the works for quite some time. and i think that when you look at what's happened here, you have sean spicer gone, you have katy walsh gone who was rienc's d deputy. so you have the whole wing of the republican national committee wing now pretty much depleted. and what you have is scaramucci, who is mini me and steve bannon left, who -- and i think the

dynamic is going to be here is bannon/scaramucci dynamic and who really speaks on behalf of the president and who -- and how those two work it out and the family remains no matter what. >> just to give you a sense of how divided and ugly this is. tonight at the trump hotel people on team scaramucci -- scaramucci himself was not in washington. but people who supported sca scaramucci will be celebrating priebus's demise at the trump hotel bar. >> i hope they get a discount. sgl that's how messy this thing has gotten. >> and maybe kelly can fix that because that's something that shouldn't be tolerated if you're a chief of staff and you can talk about this more. wasn't that long ago when the president said to jared kushner

and steve bannon, boys work it out. they were feuding publicly. and he told them to work it out. that's what a chief of staff needs to be doing right now in this white house. >> we got to take a break. up next what we know about the new chief of staff, retired general john kelly. the question tonight can he unite the west wing and stop the drama? find your city mini state of mind. new the city mini shadow palette ...from maybelline new york. our purest color pigments curated for city inspired looks. maybelline's new city mini shadows. make it happen. maybelline new york. are upgrading their watere filter to zerowater. start with water that has a lot of dissolved solids... pour it through brita's two-stage filter... dissolved solids remain! what if we filter it over and over? oh dear. thank goodness zerowater's five-stage filter gets to all zeroes the first time.

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with reince priebus out and john kelly in, we want to spend a few minutes filling you in on who he is. taking on a new role in the administration. president trump gave a hint of what was about to happen when he went out of his way praising kelly earlier today in a speech in long island. >> i want to congratulate john kelly who's done an incredible

job as secretary of homeland security. incredible. one of our real stars. truly one of our stars. john kelly is one of our great stars. >> that was before it was announced priebus was out. he's a four-star retired marine general. you reported on the pentagon for years, have a lot of experience with general kelly. explain his background and experience. >> four star marine, anderson. very close to defense secretary james mattis. and the current chairman of the joint chief of staffs, also currently serving four-star marine. so he knows national security, even before he went to homeland security. this is a guy who knows how to run a large organization. he served in iraq in combat in western iraq in umbar, in fallujah. so he's seen very tough times. donald trump likes his generals.

but will the generals like kelly really be able to adapt to president trump's flexible management style. he's come nothing to an organ e organization that may be very different than what he's used to and he will have to adapt to that to a large extent. >> and kelly's a true believer enboth the president and the president's agenda. >> anyone you talk to, anyone who has watched him operate the last several years. he is very tough and has been even when he was in the military on border security. on his concerns about terrorists coming across the sutouthern border. he was very much in favor of the laptop band to protect aviation security. these are all matters he has been deeply involved with. there's a very human side that

has shaped general kelly in recent years. in 2010 his son, first lieutenant robert kelly was killed in action in afghanistan. it was a tremendously difficult time as one can only imagine for the kelly family. many will tell you -- when you lose a child he has never gotten over and something that has shaped him very much in recent years. >> back with the panel joining us as well. cnn military analyst. he knees kelly well. they worked on combat operations in iraq together. so let's start with you. what is the leadership style like? and what do you think she'll take to the role which is probably unlike any he's had before? >> he's straight forward he was in western iraq. w4 i was in northern iraq, he

was in fallujah. we had a sea between us. so we would work combat operations together along that border to get after the enemy in places they didn't think we'd get after them. he's very meticulous. very disciplined. he's got a great sense of humor. i found him fun to work with because he's commonsense and pragmatic. i was listening to your half hour engagement with the rest of the panel. i think john's going to get in there and he will not put up with some of the bs that's been going on in the white house. so he will exude a management style. he will help the president, i believe, get some things under control that we all know have been completely out of control since the president took office and he'll put a lot of discipline into the operation. he won't take the crap from some of the people that have been dishing it out. i see a picture of him and

mr. scaramucci together. he will melt him with his eyes. that's the kind of guy he is. he's a marine and a very good one and he knows his business and beyond all that, barbara said he's very loyal to mr. trump. he's also very patriotic. this is a guy who loves his country dearly. he's fought for it for 45 years and truthfully, he will be a very good addition to the white house and getting things under control. >> the job, also beyond organization -- one, organizationally, he's run darm of homeland security, obviously he was a top marine. the structure of those organizations very different sthan the white house which seems to have different power sectors and different people having the president's ear. and on top of that there's the politics of the job. it's also a very political job

in dealing and figuring out the politics in washington? >> first of all we make a big deal out of john and losing his son. but he was also the executive to the defense chief, mr. gates. so he learned politics and the pentagon under a pretty good aught toouter. so he had responsible for everything south of the border. there's a lot of politics that go on there not only briefing congress but also the ex-number of governments that makeup the countries of south america. he seems quiet at times but i think he'll be able to get the job done and when you look across history, when you look at people who have held the job of white house chief of staff and before, not many of them had experience moving in. i would say he has a lot of experience in government he can apply. i think he'll be a good fit and

he is very much needed as we've all been talking about. >> david axelrod is reporting that he'll be given full authority, meaning no more wandering in and out of the oval office. do you think that's really going hold? we knew anthony scaramucci has direct access and certainly the daughter and son in law seem to. and do you think the president will listen to him? >> it's a good rule unless the president decides to violate it and he hasn't shown that kind of discipline in the past. i 3rd general. and anyone who served in the white house would say anyone who served in the pentagon and high levels in the military tend to be quite politically proficient. the question is not whether he's going to take bs from the staff, it's what he's willing to take from the president. >> right. >> and whether the president is willing to listen to him.

and i think that's a very open question and generals are used to responding to presidents. this president needs a general who's going to tell him the facts of life. >> and that's the question. will he speak truth to power? >> i want to briefly bring in green, and the storming of the presidency. you spebt a lot of time reporting on the innerworkings of the white house. >> i don't think he ever really had the trust of the president but he served an important function for trump at several key points during hiz rise and as a nominee. he came out in a primary last may and kind of blew the whistlealwhistle on the gop nomination. it ended the republican movement to stop trump, which was importa important. then he became an emsary for

trump with the republican establishment and when i interviewed trump last may he had just come up with a new nickname for priebus. he called him mr. switzerland because he thought he was a neutral broker who could unify the party but when he was named to the chief of staff job, he was never granted the power that traditionally comes with a job. if you remember steve bannon's name was actually listed above priebus's. which was a cloo athat he wasn't going to have the kind of power that you'd ordinarily expect a chief of staff to have. >> and he was considering pushing out steve bannon as well. what do you think 24 impact of that would be and how likely? >> it's not clear to me. i think trump is always thinking about different advisor status and who he might push out and who he might not push out. i haven't done a lot of reporting that suggested bannon

was in jeopardy. they'd begun the administration as enemies. bannon is the nationalist camp thought he was part of the dc swamp but they wound up with an alliance of convenience. they were under attack from other factions in the white house and even as recently as last week, the two tried to team up to stop anthony scaramucci from becoming a communications director but they failed. >> tweeting today that the best chiefs of staff were also masters in politics as we were uctaing about. do you think he'll be successful in this job as a nonpolitician? >> look, the president's a nonpolitician. so you'll have a bit of a different dynamic here. i think it depends as david was saying earlier, how much authority the president gives him and whether he listens to him. i mean the president's a

71-year-old man who gets up in the morning and tweets multiple times every day and sometimes changes the news flow as a result. and generals don't like surprises, nobody does to a degree but the question is whether he's going to have any impact on the impulsiveness of this president and honestly i have no way of knowing the answer to that and how he's go having to his command chain. how he's going to deal with the other power centers in the white house. will he deal with mcmaster differently, jared differently? and how will he deal with steve bannon? and because i think steve bannon is there and will remain and so i think he's got to navigate this and i think the president has to listen to him sometimes and i just can't answer whether the president will or won't do

that. >> and i would imagine that the president feels less restrained than he ever has now with this move as well. remember, this was such an awkward marriage between donald trump and reince priebus. two years ago reince priebus came up with a loyalty pledge to try to box donald trump in from not running as an independent and they went through that drama. then the whole issue during the general election and telling him he should drop out after the access hollywood tape. this has never been. this is exactly the kind of person that donald trump believed his candidacy believed was rejecting. now being free, no spicer, no priebus, none of these people that the party put on me, now it's just me and my people. that does not suggest he may be heading down a road of more disciplined approach. >> we're going to have more on the relationship between preebice and trump coming up. more on the white house shake up as well. what he said after he tweeted that he was out. you don't let anything

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news tonight. he speak to a group of reporters reince is a good man. general kelly has been a star. done an incredible job thus far. respected by everybody. a great, great american. reince priebus, a good man. thank you very much. >> prebus only lasted six months. the chief of staff history with the president goes back further than that. cnn's randi kaye has more. >> reporter: their relationship was rocky from the start. during the republican primary, donald trump insisting the vote was rigged. and that reince prebus should be ashamed of himself because he knew what was going on. after trump became the nominee, there was more friction. trump heard bragging that he could grope women without

consent on this leaked access hollywood tape. >> grab them by the [ bleep ]. you can do anything. >> reporter: priebus had heard enough. pleading with the billionaire to drop out of the race. he then abruptly cancelled his sunday morning appearances. trump refused to step down. despite that, the two men seemed to find a way to mend fences. >> ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the united states, donald trump. >> reince is really a star, and he's the hardest working guy. >> reporter: for months priebus had the president's back, like when questions were asked about a potential conflict of interest between president trump and his businesses. >> i can assure you and everyone out there that all these things will be follow and done properly. >> reporter: priebus also fending off questions regularly about why the president still hadn't released his tax returns. >> president trump, the only people asking me this question are people like you. >> reporter: but trump's victory didn't end the drama. soon after taking office, priebus found himself unable to contain a laundry list of

controversies. like the immigration ban rollout, the russia investigation, and the failure of the senate's plan to repeal and replace obamacare. still, priebus kept up a brave face. >> i'm not in any trouble. i've got a great relationship with the president. we talk all the time. in fact, just before coming on the set, he gave me a call. >> reporter: reince priebus who was never an outsider and always a republican party guy lost an important ally when press secretary sean spicer resigned. and now just days later he, too, is out of the trump white house. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> joining me now is our panel. jeff, does this decision getting rid of priebus, and bringing in kelly, solve any of the dysfunction in the white house? >> i think it may. anderson, i don't want to do a news bulletin, but you may have heard i'm a fan of president

reagan's? >> yes. i've heard that. >> i have to tell you, i was there in the iran-contra situation in which president reagan fired don leaguen at his chief of staff. i got to tell you, that was really ugly. donald regan heard it in his office from cnn, and dictated immediately an angry one-sentence note that said mr. president, i hereby resign as chief of staff to the president of the united states. signed donald t. regan and left the building and never returned and was bitter forever about this. this is not what's happened here. president trump's situation is infinitely better than that. >> wait a minute. jeff, you have the director of the white house communications team go on cnn and call the chief of staff -- >> i understand. >> an f-ing socio-path

schizophrenic. >> but you just has reince priebus on. in the day donald regan would never have been has classy as priebus. per. i don't, i don't need to dis the late donald t. regan. that was an ugly situation which carried forever. >> the point is that regan is different than reince priebus. >> i'm just saying -- >> will having someone like secretary kelly who doesn't put up with infighting bring order to the administration? >> no. general kelly, it's terrific he's willing to serve this president, but that's the problem is this president. how many have we gone through? a chief of staff, a communications director, deputy chief of staff. deputy national security advisor.

i say this every time, anderson. it's not the monkeys. it's the organ grinder. the president needs three people. the only three people who can set his administration straight, the father, the son and the holy ghost. i admire general kelly, our president is autocratic, narcissistic, general kelly can't fix that with a better organizational chart. >> no matter how much organization, to paul's point, and i'm not going to use the words he used, but no matter how well he organizes things, and has people reporting through him, which is a victory if he's able to do that. the president is still the president, and he's not going to change tweeting at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, surprises that kelly probably doesn't know about. >> right. i think that will be the big unknown moving forward. what we have seen is there's positive energy coming from those in the white house. they're encouraged by the changes with regard to the

general coming in. they say he'll bring about respectability and discipline in the white house and create unity. here's one thing moving forward. this is not just about changing the chess pieces on the board. another thing he must do moving forward, working with scaramucci and the team to not only define the message but help execute. that's not only just the general and the comm shop, but working with the president to try and do fewer tweets, stay on message and execute their game plan. that's been one of the biggest challenges with this administration, i feel, is that while they haven't been able to achieve any executive and legislative accomplishments, because they're so busy with distractions. hopefully they can execute their legislative achievements in. >> doug, do you believe that kelly, for all his talent, can do that with this white house? >> i think he's about as good a hire as trump can make. let me tell you about my last

conversation with reince priebus six weeks ago. he asked me what am i hearing. i said it's not good. he said is that a staff thing? i said reince, no, there's one problem, and there's only one problem, and no change in staff can change that one problem. we know trump people say the leader is amazing. every day is better than the day before. the reality is here on planet earth, we know that this trump administration is wrapped in a cocoon of armageddon of its own creation. general kelly is great, but it doesn't change the one problem. >> which is the president, you're saying? >> absolutely. >> jeff, what about that? how do you respond to doug? >> to which i would respond to doug and say it's the opposite. we've listened, and i'm not picking on doug here. to republican establishment members, some of whom still out there doing this, and they were wrong every single time. donald trump is the president of

the united states, and he is the president of the united states in part precisely because he didn't listen to the republican establishment. >> do you think things are going well for him? >> no, i think there's a problem here. there's no question. but again, as i said to you in the past, anderson, i looked, literally looked, and every administration going back from obama to reagan, there was chaos in the white house stories. >> i want to stick in modern times with this white house. >> obama was just six months ago. >> let's just stick with modern times. health care which the president ran on, repeal and replace was going to be so easy. other than gorsuch which was a victory for the president, he signed a lot of bills. >> in fairness of the president, i mean, the problem with the obamacare repeal lies in the hands of the republican congress. i am appalled. after seven years, donald trump wasn't anywhere close to the white house seven years ago when they said they were going to repeal and replace.

they had nothing ready to go. >> i can give you chapter and verse from my experience of working with gop where congress failed on replacement. obama worked to pass that bill. donald trump made a few phone calls, gave a speech or two, come of which wasn't great. in front of the boy scouts, for instance. he did not work this. we need the trump white house to work hand and glove with congress. that didn't happen this time. >> paul, we've seen spicer and priebus purged from the white house. these are the people with lo longstanding relationships with congress. is there anybody left to fill the role with the president? >> there is mike pence. he's a highly regarded guy. he haven't seen him much. he was there late this morning in case they needed his vote. the problem is the president. let me give concrete suggestions to general kelly. the day before you take the job,

it's your day of maximum leverage. he needs three real things. i would say, sir, honored to serve, but i need three commitments. first, everyone reports to me. if i say they're hired, if i say they're fired, they're fired. i'm the chief of the staff. the staff works for me. i don't care whether scaramucci has a problem with steve bannon tooting his own horn, or whatever he said about self-promotion. number two, you have to get off twitter, period. you're done. your twittering days are done. twitter goes through me or staff. and number three, you got to stop attacking a decorated combat marine named robert mueller. i don't believe a man like john kelly, who lost his son in the marine corps is going to go for these attacks on robert mueller. >> shortly after the word came in that priebus is out, he spoke with cnn in his first interview with wolf blitzer. look the at what he said. >> why did you resign? i'm still trying to understand. i understand you told the