A White House in Disarray

“No WH Chaos!” tweeted President Trump Monday morning, reassuring precisely no one. Hours later, news broke that the chaos-free White House had decided to replace Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director who had managed to talk himself out of a job he’d held for less than two weeks.

Mr. Scaramucci’s potty mouth has received most of the attention. How you comport yourself in public as a high-ranking government official ought to matter, but the bigger problem was his judgment. The communications director of a Republican White House called an anti-Trump reporter at an anti-Trump magazine to vent his frustration with administration colleagues. What did he think would happen? How could someone so naive about the workings of the media be entrusted with that job?

The president was prepared to stand by Mr. Scaramucci, but the new White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, called for his ouster and Mr. Trump assented. The appointment of Mr. Kelly is a positive move, but it won’t save Mr. Trump from himself. Even if the former Marine manages to restore some order in the West Wing—and he wouldn’t have taken the job if he didn’t think he could—there’s only so much anyone other than the president can do about this administration’s growing dysfunction and irrelevance.

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal

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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal