Donald Trump, like many a businessman-turned-politician before him, argued that if he was elected, he would bring his managerial acumen to Washington, making government run like a business with efficiency and skill.

After several political commentators and news websites speculated that Scaramucci may have been threatening Priebus in that message, Scaramucci tweeted again: "Wrong!"

Reince Priebus has resigned his role as White House chief of staff, saying it had become clear that the US president wanted to go in a different direction.

The brash Wall Street financier, in an interview with a New Yorker reporter, described Priebus as a "paranoid schizophrenic" and said Bannon was in the White House just to "build (his) own brand".

Kelly is a retired general known for his work in border security.

Priebus says he intends to continue working at the White House for a couple of weeks to ease the transition of his replacement.

He said he would stay in his post and fight for Trump's agenda "as long as he sees that as appropriate". Well, better than that, actually. Reince Priebus - a good man. Thank you very much.

Asked when Kelly was offered the chief of staff job, she said, "They've been talking about it for a while". One of those biblical brothers murdered the other.

Kelly is close to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fellow Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., a fellow Bostonian who in 2010 took on the task of donning a service uniform and knocking at Kelly's then Washington Navy Yard home to notify him that his son Robert was dead. But that could take some time for that acceptance to take hold.

-Trump drew blunt criticism from GOP lawmakers over his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for withdrawing from the federal investigation into Russian campaign interference.

"But, yet, if you look at headlines over the last six months, you would think that that's the only thing happening in the world".

But it was the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci to communications director last Friday that set off Priebus' final unraveling.

But as Republicans sorted through the rubble of their health care failure, it was Trump, not his chief of staff, who was the target of criticism. Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly urged Trump against hiring Scaramucci.

Of Irish heritage, Kelly (67) is a native of Boston and stepped down in 2016 from US southern command, where he was responsible for US military activities and relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the controversial detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. Priebus, who hails from Wisconsin and has deep ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, had grown increasingly isolated in the White House, as past Republican National Committee colleagues and other allies have left or been pushed out. Meanwhile, the administration hasn't gotten around to even naming nominees for 358 of the 574 most senior positions in the executive branch.

John Kelly will start from 1 August.

The announcement caught everyone off guard.

The drama was the latest sign of disarray within the Trump White House even as it tries to advance healthcare and tax reform legislation.

Further, the president's advisers are telling him Kelly as chief of staff is a bad idea, the Times reported.

The president often throws out names casually in conversation that end up going nowhere, and there is no indication that anyone has been approached about the job.

"In my experience, he's of the belief that sometimes a little friction in the ranks is how you surface the best ideas", Gerstman said of Trump.