When Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner landed plum White House jobs, their boss, President Donald Trump, gave both powerful portfolios over a wide range of national and international policy issues.

Who knows how much influence either really has over policy matters? Ivanka's father didn't listen to her and Jared when they reportedly urged him to not abandon the Paris climate accord or to not erode rights for LGBTQ people by banning their service in the U.S. military.

But the novice government workers have another important responsibility in the White House that's been less talked about, and it's coming to the fore in the wake of the extremely short-lived tenure of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.

It is that they have had a lot of influence over who gets to work for the president in key positions. Both reportedly were big fans of Trump hiring the brash, aggressive Scaramucci to manage the White House's messaging to the American people -- until they weren't.

"Whether or not Ivanka and Jared can influence Trump's mind on policy matters depends on the day (or the moment), who else cares about an issue, or whether the president does," Vanity Fair's Emily Jane Fox writes. "But their opinion does bear weight on personnel matters.

Actually, their influence over personnel matters has been a fact since at least last spring, when Trump was running for president. Unfortunately for their boss, as well as for the rest of us, the Scaramucci debacle shows that they haven't served him too well as personal managers.

Actually, some might say their recommendations have been disastrous. In addition to Scaramucci, Ivanka and Jared have had a hand in other controversial and potentially damaging decisions Trump has made with respect to hiring or firing people. Here are the three top instances:

Paul Manfort:

Ivanka and Jared pushed for then-candidate Trump to hire Trump Tower neighbor Paul Manafort as campaign manager in the spring 2016, replacing the scatter-shot Corey Lewandowski

The idea was that political consultant and lobbyist Manafort would bring professionalism to the campaign because he had worked on behalf of important politicians in the past: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. But Manafort's clients also included notorious strongmen -- Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and Angolan military leader Jonas Savimbi -- a fact that Jared and Ivanka either ignored or somehow found useful.

Manafort's tenure didn't last too long -- though decidedly longer than Scaramucci's. He resigned from the campaign in August 2016, following a reports that his name had appeared in a ledger found in Kiev detailing millions of dollars in under-the-table payments with regard to his work on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

Along with Jared, Manafort is now one of the key Trump associates whose campaign activities are being scrutinized by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of a probe of Russian interference in the election. Notably, Manafort was with Jared at the now infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a lawyer and other Russians, who, Donald Trump Jr. was told, had ties to the Russian government and could help provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

James Comey:

Jared eagerly and "strongly advocated" the firing of FBI Director James Comey, assuring his father-in-law that the ouster would be a political "win," the New York Times reported in May. Jared's thinking is that Democrats would applaud the decision because they were still angry over Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

While chief strategist Steve Bannon and former chief of staff Reince Priebus were not fans of Comey, they urged caution, worried there would be major blowback. Of course, there was in the form of Mueller's appointment as special counsel.

Even Trump-friendly pundit Ann Coulter and website Breitbart agree that the president's decision to fire Comey was a bad move. Coulter actually called it "Kushner's decision" in a tweet last week, saying it sparked the Mueller investigation, while Breitbart said that Jared seems to be "clueless about politics" and "so in over his head."

The Reince Priebus, Anthony Scaramucci, John Kelly dance

As few as two weeks ago, Scaramucci had the full backing of the Trump-Kushners for two key reasons, Vanity Fair's Fox said. The hedge-fund manager-turned political consultant shared their unwielding loyalty to Trump, as well as their desire to see Reince Priebus removed as chief of staff. The Mooch had been feuding with Priebus because he had blocked him from a West Wing job in January, a feud that would later contribute to his spectacular undoing.

On the eve of Scaramucci finally getting his dream White House job, Ivanka sat in the president's Oval Office meeting with him, her presence conferring her support. But other senior White House aides thought Scaramucci's hiring was a bad idea, including Priebus, Bannon and former press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned immediately after his appointment.

Of course, it turned out that Priebus, Bannon and Spicer were right about Scaramucci, and Ivanka and Jared, again, were wrong.

The couple seem able to tolerate the president's frequent, unhinged and offensive statements on Twitter or in front of groups like the Boy Scouts and police officers, but they found that Scaramucci had gone too far and done serious damage to his White House's credibility with his profanity-laced phone rant to a New Yorker reporter.

So Scaramucci resigned on Monday. As all this was happening, Jared and Ivanka were also pushing for the president to replace Priebus with retired general John Kelly, who had been serving as his secretary of homeland security. They sensed -- or now hope anyway -- that Kelly will be bring discipline and professionalism to a West Wing desperately in need of a management shakeup.

With Kelly's hiring, Ivanka and Jared may have finally made a useful decision.

However, time will tell how successful Kelly can be, given that he will be working for a boss who is notoriously difficult to discipline.

One disciplined, professional move Kelly has already made -- and with Ivanka and Jared's support, Vanity Fair said -- is that he has been given authority over structural and staffing decisions.

So, that means that Ivanka and Jared will be reporting to Kelly and that the new chief of staff will essentially be the new personnel manager at the White House. We'll see how that goes and whether Trump will stop relying on his daughter and son-in-law to help him make hiring and firing decisions.

But if it's true that Ivanka and Jared will have less of a role in personnel matters, that could be the first smart and significant personnel decision they've made all year. For the time being, Ivanka seems pleased with Kelly's arrival, tweeting Monday:

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