Two of the most visible members of the Trump administration are planning their departures, the latest sign of upheaval in a White House marked by turmoil. The Principal Deputy Press Secretary to President Donald Trump, Raj Shah, and Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders, are planning to leave their respective positions at the White House, according to CBS News.
CBS News reported that sources inside the White House have confirmed the departures as Sanders plans to leave by the end of the year and Shah hasn’t given an exact date yet. Shah, 33, was temporarily filling the position of Sanders when she had gone on a long, well deserved vacation.
Shah was born and raised in Connecticut and attended Cornell University where he became politically active. Shah interned in the Bush White House in the summer of 2005 and after he graduated, he was working in the research wing of the Republican National Committee. He joined the White House the day President Trump took office, where he was made the deputy communications director and research director.
Sanders, on the other hand, has tweeted “Does @CBSNews know something I don’t about my plans and my future? I was at my daughter’s year-end Kindergarten event and they ran a story about my “plans to leave the WH” without even talking to me. I love my job and am honored to work for @POTUS.”
Several other lower-level positions in the communications department left vacant in recent weeks are likely to remain unfilled, with more departures expected in the coming weeks, according to a former official.
Numerous staffers have left the White House over the last several months, some voluntarily and others having been forced out. Those departures include Hicks; Jared Kushner’s top communications aide, Josh Raffel; homeland security adviser Tom Bossert; National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton; Trump personal aide John McEntee; director of White House message strategy Cliff Simms; communications aide Steven Cheung; congressional communications director Kaelan Dorr; assistant press secretary Natalie Strom; and deputy director of media affairs Tyler Ross.
“There will be even more people leaving the White House sooner rather than later, laid off or just leaving out of exhaustion. And it is going to be harder to find good people to replace them,” a source close to the administration told CBS News. “I do think they’re going to have a harder time getting the second wave of people in than the first, because those people were loyalists, and [new] folks will have to be recruited and encouraged and then survive the vetting process. In addition to all of that, the president prefers to have a small communications staff.”
