On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Chris Wallace questioned White House aide Kellyanne Conway about what has been described as the “disarray” inside the White House.
Partial transcript as follows:
WALLACE: Respectfully, Kellyanne, I don’t think it is beside the point. An awful lot of people in and out of this White House say the problem is there’s a lack of discipline, there’s an absence of a chain of command, so I’m gonna ask you again: will all of the White House staff report to the new chief of staff?”
CONWAY: So I will do whatever the president and General Kelly need us to do. Yesterday I was on “Fox & Friends” and said clearly that if we can have a protocol, picking order, discipline, and the chief of staff that empowers the step to succeed note that General Kelly has done that on the battlefield and the chief military aid to the cabinet secretary. So we have great faith, and that will be done. That is nothing about the outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus, who should hold his head high. Many things happen in the first six months during his tenure, and certainly, I think they were able to raise a great deal of money for the operation that allowed the Republican party to succeed.
So I am always on protocol and picking order kind of gal. I had never addressed the president even when he was a candidate — I’ve never addressed in by his first name. I always address General Kelly by his name, and nothing so much of the chief of staff role also occurs outside of the building. It is a little bit too much going on in terms of acting like he is the personal chief. General Kelly is coming from the cabinet. He will be talking to his peers about their different concerns, their different deployment of issues. We’ve got a very active cabinet. He will also be interacting with Capitol Hill. I think the chaos was on Capitol Hill in the Senate. Why after seven years nobody jumped out of a cake and gave us health care reform on a silver platter I don’t know.
WALLACE: I want to talk about the disarray inside the White House. You had and the Anthony Scaramucci with a profanity laced attack on other members of the administration on the White House staff. So I want to ask you directly have you, has Scaramucci, who said he reports directly to the president, now been told to report to John Kelly?
CONWAY: I will speak with General Kelly and the president about that. We are all very excited to have our first meeting with the new chief of staff.
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