White House chief of staff John Kelly is on "solid footing" with President Donald Trump and would only leave the administration if he were asked to, deputy chief of staff Zach Fuentes told the Washington Examiner.
Kelly is "on solid footing, but if the president asked him to move on, he would say, 'I've served my country three times now,' move on, and be perfectly happy," Fuentes told the Examiner on Monday.
"The president has no intention of asking him to move on and (Kelly) has no intention of leaving," Fuentes told the Examiner. "He plans to serve the country until he feels he's no longer having an impact on the good of the nation."
Fuentes' assertions came in the aftermath of a report that Kelly had called Trump an "idiot" and is planning to leave sometime this summer. Kelly made a rare public statement refuting the report as "total BS."
Fuentes chalked up the sundry reports detailing friction between Kelly and Trump as efforts by a "couple of people here at the White House" who are eager for the chief of staff to leave and keep trying to "knife him like this," he told the Examiner.
Fuentes' remarks also came on the eve of a report that Trump is considering Kelly as his nominee to take over the department of Veterans Affairs.
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