Andy Puzder's Confirmation Could Be in Peril

The political world is abuzz about the possibility Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, is on the outs with Donald Trump. That’s due to a not-so-deep reading of some comments by Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax Media and a donor and friend to Trump, on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday.

"The White House is showing not the amount of order that we need to see. I think there's a lot of weakness coming out of the chief of staff. I think Reince Priebus, good guy, well intentioned, but he clearly doesn't know how the federal agencies work," Ruddy told host Brian Stelter. "He doesn't have a really good system. He doesn't know how the communications flow.

Ruddy continued: "The president's not getting the back-up he needs in the operation of the White House and sometimes the pushback he needs to have with a stronger White House counsel, that you would have with a strong White House chief of staff."

Jonathan Swan at Axios notes that Ruddy met with the president at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, so the Newsmax chief likely gave us "a public glimpse into some of the advice Trump is getting privately." Whether Trump would be willing to dump his chief of staff so early into his administration—remember, we're not even a month in—will be a sign about how the new president views his time in the White House so far.

Puzder's Problems in the Senate

Could Andy Puzder, Donald Trump's nominee for Labor secretary, be in real trouble for confirmation? Word on Capitol Hill is that Republican senators are shying away from supporting Puzder—and that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell may not have enough votes to deliver. If that's the case, McConnell will ask the president to withdraw the nomination rather than forcing his members to cast a vote for which they'll be beat up by unions and others if they vote yes, and by Trump supporters if they vote no.