US First Lady Melania Trump has called for a top national security aide to President Donald Trump to be fired.
The first lady feuded with Mira Ricardel, the deputy national security adviser, during her tour of Africa in October, US media report.
“It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honour of serving in this White House,” her spokeswoman said.
The White House and the National Security Council has yet to comment.
The statement came as US media reported that Mr Trump was considering a shake up in the White House West Wing, and may be considering removing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly or Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
As deputy national security adviser, Mrs. Ricardel has served under National Security Advisor John Bolton on the powerful National Security Council for the past seven months.
According to US media reports, Mrs. Trump and Mrs Ricardel fell out during the first lady’s trip to Africa last month and quarrelled over seating arrangements on her plane.
During her trip there, Mrs. Trump told ABC in a rare interview that there are people in the White House that she does not trust.
She said she gives the president “my honest advice and honest opinions and then he does what he wants to do”.
The Wall Street Journal had earlier on Tuesday reported that Mrs. Trump’s team believed Mrs. Ricardel was behind some of the “negative stories” about Mrs. Trump and her staff.
The newspaper also reported that she repeatedly clashed with US Secretary of Defense James Mattis over “staffing decisions and policy differences”.
Mrs. Trump’s statement, released through her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham, came hours after she issued a separate statement denying reports of clashes with Mr. Kelly, her husband’s chief of staff.
“Mrs. Trump has a very positive relationship with Chief Kelly and there have never been any issues between the two,” Mrs. Grisham said.
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As the news broke, Mr Trump posted a photo on Twitter of Mrs. Ricardel accompanying him at a Diwali ceremony.
Hopper’s Chop Suey in record-breaking $92m sale
An iconic painting by famed US artist Edward Hopper has sold at auction in New York for nearly $92m (£70.7m).
The 1929 painting Chop Suey becomes the most expensive of Hopper’s work ever bought at auction.
It was one of 91 modern American art paintings put up for auction by the estate of US entrepreneur Barney Ebsworth, who died in April.
Willem de Kooning’s 1955 Woman as Landscape sold at the same Christie’s auction for $68.9m.
This set a new auction record for the Dutch-born abstract expressionist, surpassing his 1977 Untitled XXV which sold for $66.3m in 2016.
The Ebsworth collection was described by Christie’s as “representing the rise of American art across the 20th Century”, with an array of modern art styles from cubism to pure abstraction. The entire collection was valued at around $350m.
Edward Hopper was famed for his depictions of modern American life. He died in 1967. Chop Suey, which Mr. Ebsworth bought for just $180,000 in 1973, portrays two women in conversation at a Chinese restaurant.
The painter’s previously highest selling work was East Wind Over Weehawken, which sold for $40.4m in 2013.
