Ja'Ron Smith, highest-ranking Black Trump adviser, has left the White House

Top aide’s departure was long-planned, predating election results

The highest-ranking Black adviser on Donald Trump’s White House staff, Ja’Ron Smith, has departed, several news outlets have reported.

Mr Smith has served as the Trump administration’s director of urban affairs and revitalisation since day one in January 2017. His role in the White House expanded in April 2019 when he was officially named a deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, where he has worked closely with senior adviser Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law.

Bloomberg first reported Mr Smith’s departure, which a White House official later confirmed to The Hill had been “long-planned, regardless of the outcome of the election.”

While Mr Smith has long been the top Black aide in Mr Trump’s White House, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is the highest-ranking Black official in the entire administration.

Mr Smith’s last day in the White House was Friday.

It is not uncommon for White House and administration staffers to leave their posts after a full term, even if the president is re-elected for a second.

Many of of them — especially ones in top positions, like Mr Smith — can leverage their experience in the White House to bag lucrative jobs as lobbyists and corporate lawyers specialising in governmental affairs.

Over the last four years, Mr Trump has developed a soft spot for Mr Smith, calling him “my star” in meetings at the White House, the New York Times reported in a profile piece about him.

Before working for Mr Trump and Mr Kushner, Mr Smith worked for a conservative-leaning economic advocacy group connected to the political network founded by Charles and David Koch, the US oil and chemical barons who are notorious for promoting free trade and other pillars of neoliberal capitalism.

Before that, he was a legislative assistant for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the GOP’s sole Black senator, as well as Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Mr Smith had also worked for Vice President Mike Pence when Mr Pence was a congressman from Indiana.