A MAGA pundit in the running to replace Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary has been secretly meeting with one of Donald Trump’s most powerful aides.
The Daily Beast revealed last week that Scott Jennings, 48, is the frontrunner to replace Leavitt and new reports suggest negotiations are underway.
One of Trump’s most rabid defenders as CNN’s resident conservative, Jennings has declined to say whether he wants the new job since the Beast broke the news but he has been staging a number of media appearances that suggest he desperately does.
It now emerges that he met with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to discuss taking on the role even before Leavitt, 28, announced she’d be stepping down to spend more time with her young family, according to the Daily Mail. Jennings is himself a columnist at the newspaper.
Jennings served as a senior aide under the George W. Bush administration and later as an adviser to missing Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Three sources familiar with the selection process told the Mail that Jennings has since met with Wiles, who considers him her chosen candidate, on at least one more occasion. They “speak often,” those people said, with one person adding that the job is “his if he wants it,” and that “he does.”
Their latest clandestine sit-down came at D.C. steakhouse Morton’s, a short distance from the White House, where they shared dinner over the weekend. Other candidates were meanwhile climbing over one another for the president’s attention at an event at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“They were all trying to get in front of him this weekend. It was like The Apprentice,” one person said, referring to the show that made Trump a reality TV star. “It reeks of desperation.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Jennings and the White House for comment on the Mail’s claims. The White House has officially denied any meetings took place between Jennings and Wiles, and Jennings has played his cards close to his chest so far.
It is not, in any case, a done deal. Insiders told the Mail that Trump has been clear he’d prefer to see another woman take the podium after Leavitt’s departure. The president’s close relationship with another young female aide, Natalie Harp, 35, has attracted increasing scrutiny over the past several months.
The newspaper reports that Harp has in fact thrown her hat into the ring, alongside Trump’s former attorney Alina Habba, current DHS press secretary Katie Zacharia, her predecessor Tricia McLaughlin, RNC spokesperson Elizabeth Pipko, and former Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Davari.
Housing chief Bill Pulte, Breitbart’s D.C. bureau chief Matthew Boyle, and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung have also put themselves in the running.
