Historically the communications responsibility in the White House has been split between two people. A communications director who sips good bourbon and thinks big brain thoughts and a pinata press secretary who gets fed to the news media every day at noon like some pagan sacrifice. Since January 20, Sean Spicer has been filling both roles and it shows. He is being consumed by the daily press battles and messaging for the administration on what it is doing is simply being lost as you have several surrogates spinning conflicting stories. According to press reports, that is set to change:

Crossroads Media founder Mike Dubke is expected to be named as White House Communications Director, two administration officials tell CNN.

The appointment is expected to be announced as early as Friday, the officials say.

The expected appointment is rankling some inside the White House, with longtime Trump loyalists inside and outside the West Wing saying they would have preferred a veteran from the campaign.

“Dubke and his Crossroads friends did everything they could to kill the Trump movement and failed,” one loyalist said.

Am told Mike Dubke will be comms director, which @Acosta just reported. Here he is hiding in plain sight at Trump presser 2 over from Spicer pic.twitter.com/Mc7Bfd67kw

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) February 17, 2017

Crossroads Media is a GOP focused communications company that has represented a lot of candidates, like Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, and trade groups and corporations. It is best known as the ad maker for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS. That is where the butthurt of some Trump loyalists is coming in. Rove was not a big Trump fan this past election cycle and even though Crossroads Media, according to this report, did not develop anti-Trump ads, the Rove stink is still there. (More Dubke info.)

Dubke will bring some critical communications expertise to the White House and it seems to be another indication that Mike Pence is slowly but surely establishing control of the day-to-day White House operations as Priebus, Spicer, and now Dubke, are much closer to Pence than they are to the Bannon-Miller team.