When Gen. John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff back in July of 2017, it was assumed that the decorated military veteran would help bring some order to an otherwise chaotic presidential administration. And for awhile, it worked — sort of! Both Kelly and Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis were reportedly tag-teaming one another to babysit President Trump, and Kelly had been attempting to filter all of the news the president consumed.
But that could only last for so long, and in the wake of the Rob Porter scandal, rumors of Kelly’s dismissal began to swirl. So it should come to little surprise that the AP is now reporting that Trump has begun leaving his chief of staff — who was once a “fixture at the president’s side” — out of important conversations and decisions entirely.
Kelly was apparently not on the phone when Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his shammy election win, or even in the room when he made the controversial decision to appoint John Bolton as national security adviser. In yet another way our president acts like a giant toddler man, the reason for this is all too predictable.
But those close to the president say that Trump has increasingly expressed fatigue at Kelly’s attempts to shackle him and that while Trump is not ready to fire Kelly, he has begun gradually freezing out his top aide.
Trump recently told one confidant that he was “tired of being told no” by Kelly and has instead chosen to simply not tell Kelly things at all, according to a person who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The kicker at the end of the piece states that Kelly had confided to those close to him that he had hoped to be on this job for a year, however “one person familiar with his thinking said the chief of staff recently voiced doubt he would make it that far.” All of the best people!