After just three months on the job and following rumors of a major White House shake-up, President Donald Trump's communications director, Mike Dubke, has quit.
Dubke gave his resignation on May 18, according to a senior Trump administration official who spoke with Axios's Mike Allen. It came ahead of Trump's first foreign trip last week, but Dubke offered to stay on temporarily, which Trump accepted.
According to the official, Dubke had been working to restructure the White House press team, which has struggled to respond quickly to Trump's decisions with little warning. According to Axios, Dubke struggled to gel with members of the team, his departure serving as a "reminder of how hard it is for newcomers to thrive in Trumpland."
When former FBI Director James Comey was fired in early May, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was caught unprepared to respond to questions and gave a late-night, open-air press briefing to reporters after conferring with colleagues near some bushes.
In the wake of the disjointed response from the press team to Comey's firing, Trump tweeted that he was considering canceling press briefings altogether.
Dubke will reportedly stay on at the White House for a short time during a transition period that will involve other changes to help the administration cope with the slow-moving Russia investigation that has hampered Trump's agenda. According to Axios, his last day has not been set.
Related: Sean Spicer refuses to answer questions about Trump tapes of Comey
Before Trump left for his first foreign trip on May 22, during which he visited five countries in nine days, senior White House officials had said major changes were on the way in Trump's press team.
Last week, reports said that Trump's once-fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will return to his side this week. Lewandowski will reportedly deal exclusively with the Russia scandal, which has led to former members of the president's campaign team being accused of colluding with Russian intelligence officials to influence the 2016 election.
Other changes are also in the works, including giving Spicer a more behind-the-scenes, off-camera role. The White House intends to give fewer on-camera briefings overall, and Trump will do more of the talking, taking more questions from reporters during foreign trips.
That's because the president "says things exactly the way he wants them to be said," a White House official told Axios.
