That didn’t last long: so much for Gen. John Kelly being able to keep Donald Trump in line
That didn’t take long. One day after retired General John F. Kelly took over the White House Chief of Staff job with the presumptive promise of bringing order to chaos, it’s already become clear that he can’t bring order to Donald Trump himself. Trump woke up this morning, and as if to rebel against his own decision to hire the straight-laced Kelly, he let loose with a whole new kind of rabid ranting.
Trump began his Twitter foray this morning by bragging about the stock market and corporate profits, in a manner which made clear he doesn’t understand that the ongoing economic boom is still a direct result of the policies installed by President Barack Obama. But then Trump quickly pivoted into ranting about “fake news media” and “Trump enemies” while insisting that these are the reasons he has to rant so rabidly.
Here’s what Trump tweeted: “Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!” (link). This came after various stories in the media yesterday which insisted John Kelly would only have taken the job if he had veto power over Trump’s tweets. It sounds like Trump just very publicly told Kelly what he thought of that idea. And thus Trump is already openly rebelling against the latest hapless handler who’s been tasked with trying to get him to act like a normal person.
This comes after a historically chaotic eleven day period in which Donald Trump hired Anthony Scaramucci, accepted the resignation of Sean Spicer in protest of Scaramucci, forced the resignation of Reince Priebus at the request of Scaramucci, and then fired Scaramucci. It raises the question of how much longer before Trump also fires John Kelly, who should probably wait a bit before unpacking his desk just to be safe.
