Rand Paul’s sputtering presidential campaign has lost a top staffer: policy aide Elise Jordan.

Jordan, a former Bush White House and State Department aide who had been advising Paul on foreign policy, has left the campaign to take a job at NBC News and MSNBC as a political analyst.

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“I think the world of Senator Paul and am so proud of how he changed the entire field's debate on criminal justice and foreign policy,” Jordan wrote in an email.

A Paul spokesman, Sergio Gor, did not respond to a request for comment.

The departure comes amid widespread consternation in Paul world that his presidential bid may be nearing an end. On Monday, it suffered a serious blow when it failed to qualify for the primetime Fox Business debate, to be held this Thursday. Rather than appear in the lesser-watched undercard, Paul announced that he would campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Jordan is the widow of Michael Hastings, the former "Rolling Stone" reporter whose 2010 profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, led to the general's resignation.