White House Communications Director Resigns

WASHINGTON — The White House has lost its communications director just 12 weeks after he was appointed to the job.

Mike Dubke, founding partner at the Alexandria, Va., consulting firm Black Rock Group, was named assistant to the president and the leader of the White House communications team on March 6.

“I want to thank Mike Dubke for his service to President Trump and this administration,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said in a statement today. “We appreciate Mike and are very grateful for his service to President Trump and our country.”

“Mike tendered his resignation just before the president’s historic international trip and offered to remain on board until a transition is concluded,” Priebus added. “Mike will assist with the transition and be a strong advocate for the president and the president’s policies moving forward.”

Dubke said in a memo to associates that his reasons for leaving are “personal.” He said his resignation was tendered to President Trump during a private meeting on May 18.

Axios, which broke the news, said Dubke didn’t fit in an inner circle of longtime Trump loyalists.

“What happened with Dubke, a lot of it has to do with just how impossible the job of communications director was in this White House. What had happened is Sean Spicer had come in not just as press secretary, but also as communications director, so he had two tasks there,” CNN senior media and politics reporter Dylan Byers said this morning. “That, obviously, was sort of overwhelming, and it created this weird structure where he brought in Dubke to sort of work under him. But, of course, as you and I and we all know, working for President Trump, trying to come up with a cohesive messaging strategy for a president who is extremely temperamental, who has different aides pulling him in different directions all the time, it’s very hard to have a coherent messaging strategy coming out of that.”

“So, I think for Dubke, you know, it’s just an impossible job. And that, too, is why you’re probably not going to see anyone come in and move in and fill that position right away. And if you do, that is going to have to be somebody who really is capable of talking with the president, of being in the president’s inner circle,” Byers added. “That was not Dubke. Dubke was a Spicer guy.”