[Ana Cabrera, Cnn Anchor:] Kelly takes over the office from Reince Priebus, squarely in the crosshairs of Trump's colorful new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci. The man who calls himself the Mooch referred to Priebus as a, quote, "paranoid schizophrenia." Reince Priebus is the sixth member of the organization to resign or be fired since February. All this changed when President Trump began his morning today in a very familiar way on Twitter. He tweet-slammed Republicans for failing to pass health care reform and complained about the Russia investigation. Our reporters are covering every angle of this new shakeup. Kaitlan Collins is live on the North Lawn. And correspondent, Dianne Gallagher, from Washington as well. Kaitlan, we know Priebus has been often considered the source of those White House leaks. Did that have anything to do with his resignation?
[Kaitlan Collins, Cnn Correspondent:] Ana, it's safe to say that there are multiple factors that led to Reince Priebus' resignation this week. This has been a long-rumored departure that we've been waiting on for months now. And it finally came to a fever pitch this week. But it's hard to see how the new communication director's allegations that he was leaking White House information to reporters was not a big factor in that. In fact, Reince Priebus was asked about this during his first interview with CNN last night after it was made known that he had resigned. Listen to what he had to say to Wolf Blitzer.
[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn Host, Wolf:] Are you the leaker in the White House?
[Priebus:] That's ridiculous. Wolf, come on. Give me a break. I'm not going to get into his accusations.
[Blitzer:] Why not respond to
[Priebus:] Because I'm not going to. Because 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. So
[Blitzer:] Is there a leaking problem in the White House based on what you've seen?
[Priebus:] Yes. I think that General Kelly should see if he can get to the bottom of it and figure it out.
[Collins:] So as you can see there, Ana, Reince Priebus downplaying the tensions between him and Anthony Scaramucci and the tensions between him and the president. But what's clear is that the president no longer had confidence in him to be a strong chief of staff and to lead the White House. And that's what was made obvious by his resignation this week.
[Cabrera:] So now, Dianne, there's a lot of talk about who might replace General Kelly. And one name raising some eyebrows is, of course, Embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions. What more can you tell us about this?
[Dianne Gallagher, Cnn Correspondent:] Yes, Ana, so this is sort of a wild theory that's being tossed around by politicos and talking heads right now. Look, we need to be clear, there's no evidence right now to suggest that this is anything more than that. But essentially some believe that President Trump would slide attorney general Jeff Sessions over to Homeland Security to replace John Kelly, who, of course, is the new chief of staff. Trump has, of course, made it no secret that he's not happy with the attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, among other things. And that's treatment that's angered conservatives who genuinely like Sessions and think he's doing a good job. So this theory contends that if Sessions was moved to Homeland Security, Trump could satisfy Republicans, and he'd also get a chance to name a new attorney general who then perhaps could fire special counsel Robert Mueller, who Trump has repeatedly said is on a witch hunt in his investigation of possible collusion between the Trump administration and the Russia connection to the 2016 election. Now, again, it's just a theory, but one Senator, Lindsey Graham, has already tried to pour water on today. In two retweets of an article that was talking about this possibility, Ana, Graham applauded Sessions' credentials as attorney general. And then he wrote, quote, "DHSs Secretary Jeff Sessions doesn't sound right, doesn't feel right, bad idea." Graham obviously getting out ahead of things, Ana. But even if all of this did happen, look, we got to point out that the Senate would still have to confirm a new attorney general. So even if it was the plan all along, it's not exactly a perfectly wrapped package for the president to get that done.
[Cabrera:] All right. Dianne Gallagher, Kaitlan Collins, thank you both. I want to talk more about this. The man who knows how a White House chief of staff can make or break an administration. Chris Whipple is author of "The Gatekeepers, How the White House Chief of Staff Defines every Presidency." Chris, great to have you with us.
[Chris Whipple, Author & Documentary Filmmaker:] Thank you, Ana.
[Cabrera:] First, your reaction to this shakeup.
[Whipple:] Well, it's no surprise. This is a broken White House. Reince Priebus presided over a White House that can't do anything right. They can't pass legislation, they can't issue executive orders that are enforceable, they can't prioritize the president's agenda.
[Cabrera:] Was that Priebus' fault?
[Whipple:] Look, he made rookie mistake after rookie mistake, but ultimately, the responsibility is President Trump. And, you know, what troubles me is that every sign so far since this announcement of the shakeup and the replacement of Priebus, every sign points to this ship just continuing to sail toward the rocks. And the reason for that is Donald Trump doesn't get it, doesn't understand what Ronald Reagan understood from day one, which is that an outsider president has to empower a savvy White House chief of staff to execute his agenda, to act as a gatekeeper, and to get things done. And until Trump learns that lesson, he's headed for the rocks.
[Cabrera:] So you don't think Reince Priebus was empowered, just to give our viewers a little bit of insight about the dynamics between these two.
[Whipple:] No, in fairness to Priebus, that's true.
[Cabrera:] "The Washington Post" has reported that at one point during Priebus' tenure, Donald Trump, the president, summoned Priebus to the Oval Office to get rid of a fly.
[Whipple:] Yes.
[Cabrera:] I mean, what does that say about the role Priebus had in this administration and how the president viewed his White House chief of staff?
[Whipple:] Well, it tells you everything. It tells you what is the really central question right now as we speak. It tells you that Donald Trump doesn't understand the importance of respecting a White House chief of staff and empowering him to get the job done. There's no replacement for that. I mean, you can have robust debates, you can have internal ideological battles, but at the end of the day, everybody has to fall in behind that White House chief. And let me say something about leaks because one of the troubling things is that Kellyanne Conway suggesting that somehow Kelly's going to be a big bad guy who intimidates leakers. I interviewed every living White House chief of staff, Republican and Democrat, going way back, here's what they would tell you. The way you prevent leaks, the way you minimize leaks, is by telling the truth and by running a competent White House staff that engenders loyalty instead of fear. That's how you prevent leaks. You don't do it by strapping people up to polygraphs, you don't do it by acting like Scaramucci. I mean, another really bad sign that this administration is off track is that nobody's taken Scaramucci and thrown him over the White House fence.
[Cabrera:] He's been empowered, clearly.
[Whipple:] That would be a good start.
[Cabrera:] Well, you know, we've talked a lot about the shakeup within this administration just in the last week. We had Sean Spicer, Scaramucci replacing him, now we have a new chief of staff. I want to put out a tweet there that the president made before he was president back in 2012 as he commented on a chief of staff change within the Obama administration saying, "Three chiefs of staff in less than three years of being president, part of the reason why Barack Obama can't manage to pass his agenda."
[Whipple:] You know, that has nothing to do with whether Barack Obama was effective or not effective. The truth is that every president learns, with the exception of our current president so far, sometimes the hard way, that you have to empower a White House chief to get something done. It took Jimmy Carter two and a half years to figure that out. He thought he could run the White House by himself. That didn't work out so well. It took Bill Clinton a year and a half to realize he had to really empower a White House chief to discipline him. They took Leon Panetta, the OMB director, to Camp David and virtually locked him in a cabin and wouldn't let him out until he agreed to become White House chief. But Panetta had conditions. Panetta wanted to be empowered in the way that H.R. Holderman was under Nixon to execute the president's agenda, and he was.
[Cabrera:] So when you look at John Kelly a general, we know the president likes generals do you believe that he has what it takes to have a successful run as chief of staff? That the president respects him and perhaps the dynamics between these two men would be different?
[Whipple:] Look, he's obviously going to be given a chance. We're going to find out. The generals have not succeeded, generally speaking, as White House chiefs. Al Hague was the only general to become chief in the modern era, and he lasted a little over a month. Priebus way outlasted him. The reason was that Gerry Ford had a White House structure one of the reasons had a White House structure just like Trump's. Nobody was empowered. Everybody came and went from the oval willy-nilly. He called it the spokes of the wheel with the president in the center. It was a disaster. It's very much like Donald Trump's model of governance.
[Cabrera:] So you don't think John Kelly and making this switch will make the difference?
[Whipple:] The fact that Kelly you know, so far, at least there's no indication that he has asked for or made conditions that would show that he understands the nature of the job. He's got to be the guy who is in charge of executing the agenda. People need to report to him through him to the president. If Scaramucci is going directly to Trump and reporting directly to Trump, that way lies disaster.
[Cabrera:] All right. Chris Whipple, thanks for the insight. Great to see you. Thank you.
[Whipple:] Thanks for having me. Let's bring in our panel now. With us, political analyst and historian, professor at Princeton University, Julian Zelizer. White House correspondent for "Politico," Tara Palmeri. And national reporter for Real Clear Politics, Rebecca Berg. Tara, I'll come to you first. Do you think there's something to this idea of attorney general Jeff Sessions now being named as John Kelly's replacement?
[Tara Palmeri, Cnn Political Analyst:] It would be a very convenient move for Jeff Sessions to move over. It would keep the Republicans, who are really annoyed with Trump and the way he's been treating Sessions, at bay. Not sure if it means he doesn't need to go through another confirmation hearing. That's going to be a problem. It's never good for a president or for the Senate to be wasting their time on confirmation hearings, which tend to really sully the candidate. And Jeff Sessions has had a rocky road so far with his relationship with Donald Trump. But it would be a convenient place to put him. I personally have not heard from my sources that it's a real option.
[Cabrera:] We heard the tweets from Lindsey Graham mentioned earlier by our reporter, Dianne Gallagher. Let's show viewers what was referenced there. This is according to the idea of Sessions just being named DHS secretary, is the response from Lindsey Graham, saying bad idea. Listen to what he said earlier this week about the possibility of Sessions being fired.
[Sen. Lindsey Graham, , South Carolina:] If Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay. Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency, unless Mueller did something wrong.
[Cabrera:] Rebecca, are GOP lawmakers more willing to accept Sessions being reassigned perhaps rather than fired, or would either option turn out badly for President Trump?
[Rebecca Berg, Cnn Political Analyst:] You know, I don't think that would be an acceptable course of action from the perspective of Republican Senators to reassign Jeff Sessions or to fire him. In either sense, this is going to be seen as a major shakeup. If it were to transpire. And Republican Senators have been sending a very strong signal to the White House this week that they want Jeff Sessions to stay on as attorney general. And anything else would just create this chaotic sort of environment when you already have an administration that is by all accounts in disarray. And Republican Senators we should note actually Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, said that he would not entertain a confirmation process for a new attorney general. So that's sending a message that if the president wants to fire Jeff Sessions or get rid of him and send him somewhere else in the administration, then you're going to have an acting attorney general at least for the rest of the year because it's up to the Judiciary Committee to hold these hearings. And that's Chuck Grassley's call ultimately. So very strong signals that's not going to be acceptable.
[Cabrera:] Grassley put out that statement prior to this new staff shakeup with the chief of staff position. That was after all of the tweets about general Attorney General Jeff Sessions by the president earlier in the week. Now, Priebus' stint at White House chief of staff, if you look back in the history books, it's now the shortest since the position was first created in 1946, Julian, if you take out the interim chiefs of staff who might be in the mix here or there. Meantime, he joins a growing list of Trump administration officials who have either resigned or been fired, at least six by our count. When a shakeup of this magnitude happens, what's really going on?
[Julian Zelizer, Cnn Political Analyst:] Well, if there's a shakeup of this magnitude, it means there's something wrong with the president and with the Oval Office. It's not always about the person. So when Ronald Reagan replaces Don Regan with Howard Baker, it's because of the Iran-Contra scandal that's taking place in an effort to create order in the White House. And that's always the case. And the problem is it's not clear that this shakeup will change the behavior of the president or the basic infrastructure of this White House. So my guess is that Kelly will be facing the same problems in two weeks or two months that Priebus was facing in the last few weeks.
[Cabrera:] But let me push back on that because
[Zelizer:] Yes.
[Cabrera:] General Kelly is his own man. Couldn't his behavior change the outcome here?
[Zelizer:] It could. I can't see him though reigning in President Trump. Very few people can do that. At this point, no one can. And he also has some liabilities. He doesn't have very strong relations on the Hill. He's already admitted that he's taken aback by the toxic nature of Washington. And political warfare is different than military warfare. And so I think, in some ways, he doesn't have some of the assets that Priebus had with those relations with members of the Republican Party, who as we heard from Lindsey Graham, are pretty openly upset with this president right now.
[Cabrera:] Tara, the "Wall Street Journal" editorial board wrote this, quote, "This shuffling of the staff furniture won't matter unless Mr. Trump accepts that the White House problem isn't Mr. Priebus, it's him." Does it matter who the chief of staff is for this president?
[Palmeri:] I would take some exception to that. I mean, my reporting showed that Priebus had a really strong he had a really hard time getting a strong hold of President Trump and his staff. He was very preoccupied with his own image. And the truth is that not a lot of people either feared him or respected him in the White House, and that came from Donald Trump. He took on Priebus very reluctantly. He was told that he needed Priebus because of his relationships on the Hill. And the second those relationships didn't work out, after the first health care bill didn't make it to the floor for a vote back in March, Priebus was on the chopping block. And Trump did not stop from that point saying talking about how much he was unhappy with Priebus. He expected him to deal with the House. He expected him to move his legislative priorities forward. And when he couldn't do that, even though it was a really big ask from someone considering the kind of disarray that was happening, the Russia investigation, how legislative priorities were kind of a mess, but I wouldn't say it all, you know, it's all on Trump. A big part of it is. But Priebus was never empowered and he was taken on reluctantly. And he didn't have the kind of organizational skills you need as a chief of staff. He didn't have the command. He wasn't actually willing to be fired. That's another problem. You have to be in that position and be so sure of yourself that you're willing to stand up to the president of the United States, not idolize him and adore him.
[Cabrera:] Rebecca, both Priebus and Spicer were part of the establishment, right? They came from the RNC, the quoteunquote "swamp" in Washington. What do their oustings mean for President Trump's relationship with the GOP moving forward?
[Berg:] It certainly puts a big question mark on whether Donald Trump will continue to work very closely with the Republican National Committee, as his administration was doing under Priebus as chief of staff. And he was sort of that connective tissue between the RNC and the White House. And we do know that Donald Trump has always sort of approached the Republican Party and Republican lawmakers with some skepticism because of what happened in the campaign, because there were so many Republicans who resisted his candidacy, and then were slow even when he was the Republican nominee to support him. And so there's always been a little bit of tension or a lot of tension, in some cases, between Donald Trump and the Republican Party. When he brought on Reince Priebus as chief of staff people said this is proof he's going to try to maintain strong relations with the party. Now we're not so sure. Reince Priebus obviously still talking glowingly about the president in his interviews yesterday, including with CNN. So that suggests he is going to try to keep things very positive in terms of the working relationship between the White House and the Republican Party. And, look, in this case a rising tide lifts all boats. If the president is doing well, Republicans are doing well, and vice versa. So it's in his best interests, I would think, to continue that relationship with the party.
[Cabrera:] Rebecca, Tara and Julian, thank you all. Now of all the things that happened this busy, busy week in news, few stand out more than that expletive-laced phone interview given by the new White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci. The reporter on the other end of that call is "the New Yorker" Ryan Lizza. I talked with Lizza about their interview that he calls the most insane he's ever had.
[Ryan Lizza, Cnn Contributor:] The communications director of the White House, who speaks for the White House, called me up to ask me about sourcing for a tweet I'd written about who he was having dinner with. And then, from there, it turned into I turned it into an interview. But, you know, this is someone who speaks for the White House, calling a reporter, having a clear on-the-record no-ground-rules conversation just as if he were coming on your air and sitting in this chair and talking to you. So we run into this every once in a while in journalism where sometimes we call it source remorse where, you know, people regret saying things. And I think that's what he was saying with that tweet. Although, in the previous tweet, he didn't seem to have much remorse. He just said, you know, he just joked that he used some off-color language. But, you know, from a reporter's perspective, the important thing is, one, was it on the record, were there any ground rules. It was on the record, no ground rules that he asked me to commit to. And then, two, was it newsworthy? And if the most important communicator at the White House calls you and tells you he's going to fire all the communications staffers at the White House, tells you that he has brought in the FBI to investigate the chief of staff, tells you that the chief of staff is a paranoid schizophrenic and says
[Cabrera:] That was putting it lightly.
[Lizza:] That was putting it lightly. That's just what we can say. And then, you know, goes on a rant about the president's chief strategist, I would say that's all pretty newsworthy stuff. I'm in the business of reporting on the White House.
[Cabrera:] Yes.
[Lizza:] Explaining these people to the public. So this is just a straight, how journalistic transactions work in Washington.
[Cabrera:] Do you have any regrets of how you did your reporting? Because he says it was a mistake in trusting you.
[Lizza:] No. I mean, that would be as if I were sitting here and I got off air and said, wow, that was a real mistake in trusting Ana, I can't believe I sat there and answered her on-the-record questions. No, when the communications director of the White House calls a reporter and speaks to them on the record, there's no ambiguity about what's going on there.
[Cabrera:] Right. So when he started letting all of this vulgar language fly, I've just got to know, what was your gut reaction when you're hearing all this? Have you ever heard anything like this from a White House official before?
[Lizza:] Honestly, no. I got off the phone and I needed to talk to someone about it because it was, frankly, the most insane conversation I'd ever had with a government official. I downloaded the recording from my recorder into my computer. And I haven't actually told anyone this, Ana, but I named it "Insane Scaramucci Interview" because it was just so completely unlike any on-the-record conversation I'd had with a spokesman for the White House in 20 years of covering Washington. And I knew how newsworthy it was. And so that's why I spent, you know, sort of yesterday going over the piece, going back to Scaramucci, talking to him about it, going to Steve Bannon, trying to get Reince, and just, you know, putting the piece together and doing all the due diligence on it.
[Cabrera:] Right. Does it surprise you that Scaramucci still has a job?
[Lizza:] You know, someone said that yesterday, do you think he's going to get fired? I said he's either going to get fired or promoted. You never know with this White House and this president. Trump himself speaks in sort of, you know, colorful language. And Trump himself sometimes makes internal fights public. We saw this recently, obviously, with the way he's treated his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. I haven't learned this myself, so I want to be careful. But I did notice there was some reporting in the press today that where people close to Scaramucci were saying the president liked this. Now, to be very honest
[Cabrera:] But is this really what the president had in mind when he hired Scaramucci?
[Lizza:] I think probably not.
[Cabrera:] I hope not.
[Lizza:] It would be unusual if this is what he was looking for. But he had to know that he was adding someone to his White House who did not get along with other senior people in his White House. So he had to know that he was creating a new faction within the White House that is already riven by several other factions. It's like a multifront civil war and then you're adding another army from another country. And so he had to know it would cause some friction.
[Cabrera:] Right. Ryan Lizza, thank you very much for your time. Great to have you with us.
[Lizza:] Thank you. My pleasure.
[Cabrera:] Coming up, experts say the new missile North Korea tested yesterday could now hit cities like Los Angeles, Denver, even Chicago. Plus, protests today outside the White House after the president's tweets about banning transgender soldiers from serving in the military. We'll speak to one former Navy SEAL, who is transgender, and challenging the president, to say it to her face. You're live in THE CNN NEWSROOM.