Bill Shine Resigns as White House Message Chief
Bill Shine, the former Fox News executive who joined the White House staff last summer to manage President Trump’s communications operation, has resigned and will move to the re-election campaign, the White House announced Friday.
Mr. Shine’s abrupt departure came as a surprise to many in the White House and was revealed, as such personnel moves often are in this administration, as the president was on Air Force One heading out of town.
While described by colleagues as the adult in the room, Mr. Shine has sometimes been absent during key moments, including the president’s trip last week to Vietnam, and colleagues said there had been a lack of chemistry with Mr. Trump.
The White House sought to present Mr. Shine’s resignation as amicable and issued statements in the name of the president and other White House officials praising him. But people close to the White House described the campaign job as a way to save face.
“Bill Shine has done an outstanding job working for me and the administration,” Mr. Trump said in the statement. “We will miss him in the White House, but look forward to working together on the 2020 presidential campaign, where he will be totally involved. Thank you to Bill and his wonderful family!”
Mr. Shine, who held the title of deputy White House chief of staff, was the sixth person to accept the job to manage communications chief for this White House, a position that has been problematic in a presidency where Mr. Trump prefers to be his own chief spokesman and rarely sticks to a messaging plan that aides seek to establish. The White House gave no indication who will replace Mr. Shine.
Mr. Shine’s presence in the White House was seen as emblematic of how closely Mr. Trump has aligned himself with Fox, using the network to talk with his most fervent supporters and embracing lines of argument that its hosts advance on behalf of his policies and presidency.
Mr. Trump regularly posts messages on Twitter reacting to reports he sees on Fox and he even invited two of its hosts, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, to join him on stage for a campaign rally last fall, drawing sharp criticism. The president routinely praises Fox hosts from the podium during speeches and according to a New Yorker article published this week has privately rated Fox hosts on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their loyalty to him.
Mr. Shine came into the White House with great fanfare last year, hired after an inglorious departure from a high-profile role at Fox News, where he had been the right-hand to Roger Ailes.
Initially, people in the White House — particularly those close to John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff — described Mr. Shine favorably, saying that he brought a mature presence to the team and, unusually for the White House, did not seem interested in seeking credit for himself.
But as time wore on, Mr. Shine never developed a close relationship with Mr. Trump. The president frequently criticized him to other advisers, saying that his own press coverage had not improved, according to several people familiar with Mr. Trump’s comments. And he was seen as ineffective, developing few ideas.
He attached himself to Ivanka Trump, and tried to help out with her media coverage. But an ABC News interview that she did included a question about how she and her husband obtained their security clearances, which multiple White House officials said rankled her.
Mr. Shine had spent more than a year searching for another job after he was ousted from Fox amid the scandal surrounding Mr. Ailes and allegations of sexual harassment. The White House became his potential for redemption, and for returning to the center of the action.
But Mr. Shine had increasingly been out of sight during key moments, including when the government shutdown began at the end of December. His wife, Darla, never relocated to Washington, and he was open about finding the travel away from her difficult.
As the president tweeted about legislators leaving town at the end of December, Mr. Shine was in Hawaii on a vacation with his wife. More recently, after telling people he was traveling to Vietnam for the president’s summit meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, last week, Mr. Shine ended up staying behind.