Jason Miller Backs Out Of White House Comms Job

The Trump transition suddenly has one more job to fill, and this time it's one the team thought was already squared away ― in a Christmas Eve statement, Trump campaign communications director Jason Miller changed up Donald Trump's White House plans, backing out of the White House communications director job he accepted earlier this week. Miller, 41, worked as communications director for the president-elect's primary rival Texas senator Ted Cruz before jumping to the Trump team in June.

In a statement to Politico, Miller framed the decision to back out of the vaunted White House comms job as being mainly about spending more time with his family in the aftermath of a long presidential campaign season. In particular, he cited the imminent birth of his second daughter as a reason he decided to pass up the job.

After spending this past week with my family, the most amount of time I have been able to spend with them since March 2015, it is clear they need to be my top priority right now and this is not the right time to start a new job as demanding as White House communications director. My wife and I are also excited about the arrival of our second daughter in January, and I need to put them in front of my career.

Trump picked Miller for the job on Dec. 22, alongside the announcements of Republican National Committee strategist Sean Spicer for White House press secretary, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway for counselor to the president, and campaign press secretary Hope Hicks for White House director of strategic communications.

The loss of Miller is notable, in that thusfar the people central to the late-stage operations of Trump's campaign ― the nuts-and-bolts people, as opposed to spurned political surrogates like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, or his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski ― have landed in various roles within his administration.

But, whether solely for the reasons he stated or whether he has some private reasons for stepping back, too, Miller has apparently decided the tumult of the Trump White House is something he neither wants nor needs right now. Which means there's a brand new slot open on the Trump team for a communications director, and with Conway, Spicer, and Hicks already slotted away, no self-evidently obvious choice to fill it. For the time being, according to Politico, Spicer will take on the responsibilities of the comms director job in addition to his role as press secretary.