Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been promoted to White House press secretary and New York financier Anthony Scaramucci has been formally named White House communications director in the Trump administration's latest shakeup.
Sanders, the only daughter of former two-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is the third woman in history to hold the position of White House press secretary. She served as deputy to Sean Spicer, who resigned on Friday after it was announced Scaramucci would be the next communications director. (One person with knowledge of the situation said Spicer objected to the hiring because of Scaramucci's lack of qualifications for the communications role.)
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Trump, who watches the press briefings closely and believes he is his own best spokesman, in a statement saluted Spicer's "great ratings" on TV and said he was "grateful for Sean's work on behalf of my administration and the American people."
The changes in the communications team comes as Trump is suffering from dismal approval ratings and struggling to advance his agenda. The president has been frustrated by all the attention devoted to investigations of allegations of his election campaign's connections to Russia.
Spicer's resignation comes a day after Mark Corallo, the spokesman for the president's outside legal team, left his post. And in a separate move, former White House aide Katie Walsh is returning to the RNC, spokesman Ryan Mahoney said. Walsh will serve as an adviser on data and digital issues, and the appointment is unrelated to the White House personnel changes, he said.