Trump v. Pence: Nick Ayers

Trump has begun to envy the smoothly operating vice president's office, which [Pence's Chief of Staff Nick] Ayers has managed to keep distanced from the daily scrum and scandal of the White House. Ayers has cultivated key allies, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

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But Ayers' meteoric rise has also earned him his fair share of critics, including a few inside the White House. While plans were floated earlier this month for Ayers to become the new chief of staff, multiple sources told CNN, they have stalled amid the President's reluctance to fire Kelly -- who typically does the firing for Trump -- and the backbiting Ayers has faced from some of his West Wing colleagues.

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One of Ayers' top West Wing detractors during the process has been Kellyanne Conway, the combative counselor to the President who vehemently opposed Ayers' hire as Pence's chief of staff last year, two former White House officials and a source familiar with the matter said.

Conway disputes those allegations, telling CNN: "I have zero beef with Nick Ayers."

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Ayers' journey into the Trump fold began in 2011 when he first met then-Rep. Pence in Washington. Though he and Pence didn't work together officially, they stayed in touch. In 2015, Ayers joined Pence's gubernatorial re-election campaign as a general consultant. At the time, Conway was the campaign's pollster.

Three people familiar with the campaign said Ayers was critical of Conway's polling and wanted to oust her from the role. A fourth person familiar with the time period refuted that claim.

The tables turned two years later, when White House officials mulled enlisting Ayers to take over as Pence's chief of staff in the spring of 2017 and Conway stepped in to try and block the hire, two former White House officials and a source familiar with the matter said.

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Ayers declined to comment for this story, but Alyssa Farah, the vice president's press secretary, dismissed the reporting as "absurd and it's false" and maintained that Ayers and Conway are "personal friends."

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Outside the White House, former colleagues of Ayers say his relative youth and outsized ego -- conspicuous even in a world known for naked ambition and self-aggrandizement -- have rubbed fellow political operatives the wrong way. His allies say that people are just jealous or insecure.

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Though he's only 36, Ayers has amassed a small fortune that, according to recent financial disclosures, is between $12 million to $54 million. That's been built up through financial investments, fees generated by his own political consulting firm and his former role as a principal in an ad-buying firm called Target Enterprises.

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Still, his finances and involvement with political dark money groups could become political baggage down the road. One of them, Freedom Frontier, for whom he consulted, is the subject of two recent ethics complaints, the most recent of which was filed with the IRS on Tuesday. That complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, contends the group's political spending exceeded legal limits in violation of campaign finance laws.

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After Pence brought him in as chief of staff, Ayers quickly expanded his portfolio beyond the day-to-day operations of the vice president's office. That included setting himself up as a key liaison to the Oval Office and offering to help in times of chaos.

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Ayers also worked to improve his own access to the President, multiple former Trump campaign officials told CNN. "He wanted to be around Trump a lot and the family. He made sure he was real visible," one former Trump campaign official said.

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A particularly important moment in the relationship between Ayers and the President came in January, when Ayers invited Trump to sit in his private box at the college football playoff title game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Ayers' home-state team, the Georgia Bulldogs. A photo that Ayers posted on Twitter shows the two men standing side by side in the stadium box, smiling and wearing identical red ties and navy suits. Like Trump's, Ayers' tie hangs on the long side, just past his belt buckle.

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[In the run-up to the midterms, Ayers] played a key part during White House discussions about political strategy, the candidates Trump should endorse and where he should travel. Ayers' political insights only served to amplify something several of the President's friends and advisers have voiced to him, which is that Kelly lacks the political know-how with which most White House chiefs of staff are armed.

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"From now until November 2020, every decision that should be made in that building should be a political one. Every decision should have an eye on the re-election," one source close to the President said. "Nick understands that."

If Trump does tap him to replace Kelly, Ayers would be expected to usher in a dramatic shift in tone, style and expertise.

  CNN

But that's exactly what they said about Kelly when he replaced Priebus. There is no changing Trump. It can't be done.

Ayers is seen as a strategist seasoned beyond his years who has established himself as a smooth-talking fundraiser dialed-in with the GOP's top donors.

Like Kelly, though, Ayers would be pressed to manage White House infighting, a mercurial President and the free-flowing discourse between Trump and his kitchen cabinet of outside advisers.

The challenges of the coming year could eclipse those Kelly has faced in his 16 months on the job.

No shit. The Mueller probe. The House controlled by Dems. It's going to be a very wild ride indeed.

"He's shown he can swim in the shallow end. The question is whether he can play in the deep end," a former White House official said. "They run their own agenda over at the VP's office; they go where they want, they do what they want, they avoid what they want. You don't have that luxury with this President."

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Despite hailing from more traditional Republican circles, Ayers has sought to firmly establish himself as a Trump loyalist, an important marker of trustworthiness for the President. It doesn't hurt that before joining the administration in 2017, Ayers co-founded America First Policies, which has become the principal outside political group supporting the President.

At times, though, Ayers' political tendencies have gotten him in trouble, including over an August 2017 New York Times report that Ayers told GOP donors that Pence wanted to be ready to run for President in 2020 should Trump be unable to run for re-election. He also drew flak in April over a plan to install Jon Lerner, a Republican pollster to whom he is close, as the vice president's national security adviser. Lerner was publicly forced to withdraw after the appointment caused tensions in the administration, with some reports signaling Trump was upset after learning of Lerner's association with a Republican political group that savaged him during the 2016 campaign. Lerner and Ayers are both close with outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

But Ayers' loyalty to Trump has largely shined through. During a closed-door GOP fundraiser last year, Ayers leaned into the President's willingness to knock fellow advisers and pulled no punches in criticizing Republican lawmakers who he described as insufficiently supportive of the President.

"Just imagine the possibilities of what can happen if our entire party unifies behind him? If — and this sounds crass — we can purge the handful of people who continue to work to defeat him," he told the donors.

I think we've seen that.  January is going to be a new ballgame, and anyone's guess as to how that's going to work out is as good as the next guy's.  We just know it's going to be a shitshow to outdo all shitshows.

And here's another Ayers exposé for your perusal.

Plus, a notation in this CNN article shows that Ayers was involved in a nonprofit created after the election with none other than Rick Gates, the Manafort associate who is now cooperating with Robert Mueller.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.