US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is most likely the next official to leave the administration of US President Donald Trump, following a string of firings and resignations, according to an online betting Web site, which put the odds against him staying at 3/2.
Trump’s record-setting personnel turnover inspired Costa Rica-based BetDSI to begin taking bets on White House departures and it said the chances for any particular staff member remaining employed in the White House were not high.
“Due to the ongoing turnover we’ve seen thus far in the Trump administration, no member on this list can feel particularly safe in their position,” BetDSI said in a statement on the 24 Trump officials it gave odds for (betdsi.eu/sportsbook-betting/politics-odds/).
Turnover among White House senior staff during Trump’s first year was at least twice as high as that of any of the five past US presidencies, according to Brookings Institute research.
After firing outgoing US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, the US president has been talking to confidants about replacing McMaster and US Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, sources familiar with the conversations told Reuters this week.
The likelihood Shulkin will be removed within days were so high that BetDSI said it did not include him on its odds list.
Most likely to exit, after McMaster, were US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, with odds of 7/4 and 6/1 respectively.
Among staff whose jobs appeared most secure were US Vice President Mike Pence at 50/1 and US Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon with the same odds, according to BetDSI.
Such is the concern among White House employees about job security that White House chief of staff John Kelly on Friday assured Trump aides that no immediate personnel changes were in the works, Sanders told reporters on Friday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema