John Kelly has snapped
When retired General John Kelly took over as Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, the near-unanimous view on both sides of the aisle was that Kelly would at least try to impose a degree of discipline and professionalism. His track record, which has included highs like firing the openly racist Sebastian Gorka, and lows like protecting alleged wife beater Rob Porter and lying about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, is seen in mixed terms. But now, with the pressure mounting, the normally disciplined Kelly has simply snapped.
Even as Donald Trump has controversially fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe this week, one major media outlet after another has reported that Trump is considering firing John Kelly as well. Now we’re seeing proof that Kelly isn’t taking things particularly well. This week he told a room full of White House employees and off-the-record reporters that Rex Tillerson learned he’d been fired while he was on the toilet.
This sounds like the kind of thing that’s too on-the-nose to be true, and yet sure enough, the Daily Beast is reporting that it really did happen (link). It’s one thing for Tillerson to have gotten the news while he was on the can, and it speaks to just how little professionalism there is to be had in Trump’s White House in general. But it’s a whole other thing for Kelly to tell that kind of story to an audience that he had to have known would end up leaking it. Even if the reporters didn’t violate the off-the-record status of the story, the employees would have.
Yet John Kelly stood there and told this story to the room anyway. It’s not something that he would have ever done in his earlier months in the White House. Either he’s too far gone psychologically to realize what he’s saying anymore, or he purposely told the story because he wanted it out there. Either way, whatever you think of Kelly, this isn’t like him. He’s clearly snapped under the pressure.
