Isn't this kind of like calling your ex to complain about the new girlfriend you dumped her for?

President Trump is reportedly so annoyed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he's been in touch with the only other person who could understand: Reince Priebus, his former chief of staff, who also annoyed him. Priebus was pushed out to make room for Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general who was touted as bringing calm to a chaotic White House. But it turns out, The New York Times reports, Trump doesn't like it when his aides are in the news for the wrong reasons, and Kelly made negative headlines this week for forcefully defending former White House staff secretary Rob Porter after he was accused of domestic violence, and suggesting that some undocumented immigrants are "too lazy to get off their asses" to apply for legal status.

Two people briefed on the subject told the Times that Trump has been asking his advisers what they think about Mick Mulvaney — director of the White House budget office and interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — as a potential replacement for Kelly. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, told the Times he's worried about Kelly. "Even he has admitted it's probably the toughest job he's ever had," he said. "And I really do think sometimes, particularly with this president, you're fighting on so many fronts it's tough not to have that job wear on you." Read more about Kelly's precarious situation, and the memo he sent out to White House staffers regarding domestic violence, at The New York Times. Catherine Garcia

In the final stretch of the 2018 elections, Republicans have quietly dropped their plans to run on their tax cut and the economy, Samantha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. "But don't worry, because Republicans have another cool technique for getting votes without doing anything useful: The terrifying culture wars." She had a graphic ready for that, and video clips. "Republicans control all three branches of government!" she protested. "How do you play the victim when you've won everything there is to win? Well, they've found a way: Telling people that Democrats will eat them."

Bee played some ads. "I wish the left were 'crazytown,'" she said. "By the way, do you know what is actually nuts? Conflating Nancy Pelosi with a handful of masked anarchists who hate Nancy Pelosi more than any Republican." She ran through various "scary "groups, like kneeling football players, Beto O'Rourke, and especially women. "The right is really painting a picture of liberal women as deadly bitch tornado," Bee said.

The hot new attack is the incessant incantation of the word "mob" connected to "left-wing" or "Democrat." "The only time I've seen an unhinged mob of Democrats is when NPR runs out of totes," Bee joked, conceding: "Well, if anyone would know about the mob, it's Donald Trump."

"So, is this culture war bulls--t actually working? " Bee asked. "It's unclear. The typical American voter is looking around and seeing that their wages are stagnating, their health care's in danger, and their boss just bought another mega-yacht. I tend to think that's gonna matter more than a few loud pussy hats." There is NSFW language throughout. Peter Weber

There's a growing consensus in Washington and Europe that Saudi Arabia, specifically Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is culpable in the Oct. 2 disappearance and likely murder of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And the latest group signaling its conviction of the crown prince's guilt is the U.S. intelligence community, The New York Times reports. This assessment, based so far on growing circumstantial evidence, poses a challenged for President Trump and some of his key advisers, who have urged patience and highlighted Saudi Arabia's denials and the kingdom's economic and strategic importance.

Trump can ignore or disagree with the U.S. intelligence assessment, the Times says, but so far he's keeping Congress out of the loop. The Trump administration has "clamped down" on sharing intelligence about the Khashoggi case and canceled a classified briefing scheduled for Tuesday, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday. "I suppose they don't want us to see the intel," he said, and "I can only surmise that probably the intel is not painting a pretty picture as it relates to Saudi Arabia." Based on previous intelligence he reviewed, Corker added, "everything points not to just Saudi Arabia, but to MBS," as bin Salman is commonly called.

Other senators from both parties have also called for a stronger response to Saudi Arabia's apparently brutal murder inside its Istanbul consulate, and they can act without the White House, voting for sanctions with a veto-proof majority. But Trump is reportedly holding out for what The Washington Post calls a "mutually agreeable explanation" from the Saudis, one that avoids implicating MBS. "The president is trying to introduce a little calm into this, to wait and see who's directly responsible," Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani explained to the Post. "While he makes clear he doesn't approve of what has happened, it's complicated because this isn't a pure enemy he's dealing with, like if Iran did it." Peter Weber

It will be called the Harmony Playground, where all children will be free to play in their own way.

The town of Clayton, North Carolina, is planning on breaking ground for this inclusive project in 2019. The inspiration came after planners heard about the difficulties some families face when it comes to finding places where their children feel welcome. "You know, it really broke my heart when I started talking to parents that when they have children with special needs, that they avoid playgrounds," Dean Penny of the Clayton Recreational Foundation told WRAL.

Harmony Playground's design takes into account all kinds of special needs and disabilities; for example, the sidewalks will be at different elevations, so a child in a wheelchair will be able to wheel down to the lower level. Several businesses in the area are supporting the effort and helping raise funds, and the town is about halfway to its goal of $800,000. Catherine Garcia

Dennis Hof, a Republican candidate for the Nevada state legislature, died on Tuesday, but that might help him get even more votes, his campaign manager said Wednesday.

Hof, 72, owned five legal brothels and a strip club, wrote the book The Art of the Pimp, and appeared on the HBO show Cathouse. His name will stay on the ballot, campaign manager Chuck Muth told Reuters, and he has several things going for him — not only are there more registered Republicans than Democrats in his state Assembly district, but "there are a lot of Republicans who were uncomfortable voting for Dennis because of the nature of his business and they now know that he is not the one who will be serving. They will feel much more comfortable casting the ballot for him knowing there will be another Republican to replace him."

Assembly District 36 covers three counties, and if Hof wins, each county's board of commissioners would nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy, then hold a joint meeting to discuss the nominees and pick one to replace Hof before the 2019 legislative session starts, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. Catherine Garcia

President Trump gave quite the interview to The Associated Press on Tuesday, and Stephen Colbert ran through some of the highlights on Wednesday's Late Show: Whether it was appropriate to call Stormy Daniels "Horseface," Don Jr.'s meeting with Russian officials in Trump Tower, and, especially, Trump's continued ambivalence over climate change. Trump said he felt comfortable disagreeing with 97 percent of the world's scientists because he has an inherent, inherited knack for science, thanks to an uncle who was a professor at MIT. Colbert had some questions.

"First of all, why did you bring up your science uncle if you never talked to him about science?" Colbert asked. "And second, you have a 'natural instinct for science'? That's not how knowledge works. You don't inherit it from your uncle! The most you ever get from your uncle is your own nose back." Of course, Trump "and his petrochemical pals would like you to ignore global warming altogether, but that may not be possible soon," he said, "because a new study says that beer prices could double because of climate change. Or as the brothers at Sigma Phi Epsilon put it, 'Climate change just got real.'" And yes, there is a shout out to Brett Kavanaugh. Watch below. Peter Weber

The Washington Post published Jamal Khashoggi's presumptive final column on Wednesday, with a somber note from Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah.

Attiah wrote that she received the column, titled "What the Arab World Needs Most is Free Expression," from Khashoggi's translator and assistant one day after he was reported missing in Istanbul earlier this month. The Post didn't publish it right away, Attiah explained, hoping she and Khashoggi could edit the column together, but "now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for the Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for."

In the column, Khashoggi discusses the 2018 Freedom of the World report, which declares that just one country in the Arab world, Tunisia, can be classified as "free." Three other countries are "partly free" and the rest are "not free," which Khashoggi found unacceptable. "Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed," he said, leaving them "unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives."

He wrote about the crackdown on writers and newspapers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the importance of providing a "platform for Arab voices." People are facing poverty, poor education, and mismanagement, he concluded, and if there could be a forum "isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face." Read the entire column at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia