After Ayers Turns Down Chief of Staff Job, Trump Is Left Without a Plan B

WASHINGTON — President Trump has often bragged about having his pick of only the best people to serve in his administration.

Being publicly rejected by his first choice for chief of staff — and embarking on a very public search for someone else — has made Mr. Trump’s claim harder to back up.

A shortlist of last-ditch possibilities has emerged, including family-vetted officials like Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, but only one possibility — Representative Mark Meadows, the hard-right Republican congressman from North Carolina who is so far not quite inside the Trump children’s circle of trust — has voiced interest.

After Nick Ayers, the Georgia political operative who was the president’s top pick, declined the job — something of a plot twist in a presidency notorious for its episodic cliffhangers — Mr. Trump is without a Plan B. Several of his aides expressed frustration that months of intense campaigning to replace John F. Kelly — an effort led by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s elder daughter and son-in-law — resulted in yet another chaotic staffing scramble in a White House splintered by factions and rife with turnover.

“Why would anybody want to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff unless you want to steal the office supplies before they shut the place down?” said Chris Whipple, who wrote a book on White House chiefs of staff called “The Gatekeepers,” expressing the views of many outside the White House about Mr. Kelly’s job. “If you’re coming into that job, you’ve got to lawyer up.”

Mr. Trump faces a week marked by negotiations with Congress over a possible government shutdown and difficult negotiations over the funding for his long-promised border wall. But on Monday, according to several people close to the administration, the president was more focused on his success in dispatching Mr. Kelly than on his anger at Mr. Ayers.