John Kelly finds a whole new way to blow it

| 11:54 am EST February 21, 2018
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It turns out General John Kelly isn’t much different than the last hapless fool who made the mistake of becoming Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, and he’s not much different from whoever will inevitably end up taking his place. Since taking the job, Kelly has had virtually no success in getting Trump to act more competent or less deranged, and because Trump’s toxicity rubs off on everyone who goes to work for him, Kelly is now making more of a fool of himself by the day.

This month we learned that John Kelly had spent months protecting White House aide Rob Porter, who couldn’t get a permanent security clearance because he’s been accused of domestic violence by two ex-wives, one of whom had a protective restraining order against him. Why did Kelly go to the mat for Porter? Presumably because half of Trump’s White House, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, haven’t been able to get security clearances either. Now Kelly has gone and blown it even worse.

Kelly announced last Friday that he was going to make the Trump White House security clearance scandal go away once and for all by dispensing every employee who has been unable to pass the kind of background check required to gain a permanent security clearance. The trouble with that plan: Kelly implied by default that he was about to fire Trump’s daughter and son-in-law. So did Kelly boldly stick to his principles? Of course not.

John Kelly quietly announced yesterday that Jared Kushner will get to keep his job after all. How’s he going to be able to do that job, since he doesn’t have the security clearance to do it? Kelly conveniently didn’t answer that part. So either Kelly is already abandoning his bold new policy after just four days, or Donald Trump is planning to grant Kushner a permanent security clearance despite the fact that he’s not legally eligible for one. Kelly has found a whole new way to blow it.