A conservative media executive who is close with President Donald Trump said the President told him Saturday he expects more “major changes” to his administration.
“He did say that he’s expecting to make one or two major changes to his — to his government very soon, and that’s going to be it,” Newsmax Media CEO Chris Ruddy said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Ruddy said he spoke with Trump by phone on Saturday and that the President said he was “perplexed” by reports of chaos at the White House following major shakeups within the administration, including the announced departure of White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster earlier in the week.
Ruddy said he heard from “other White House sources, not the President,” that Trump is pleased with embattled Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, but that Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin “is likely to depart.”
Trump’s announcement of John Bolton as his new national security adviser would make Bolton his third permanent national security adviser in more than a year, and the shift came after other high-profile departures, including the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via Twitter and the resignation of White House chief economist Gary Cohn.
A Brookings tally of administration departures pegged the “rate of turnover” among the top level of Trump’s team at 48%.
