The real reason Donald Trump is so afraid of John Kelly
This week something remarkable happened: a U.S. military General told off the President of the United States and got away with it. Sure, General John Kelly is retired and is now serving in the civilian role of White House Chief of Staff. And sure, Donald Trump isn’t a legitimate President. But still, these things don’t happen. Trump is clearly afraid of Kelly, and for that matter he’s also afraid of James Mattis and H.R. McMaster. I suspect I know why.
The unusual exchange began with Trump “lashing out” at Kelly, according to the New York Times, and Kelly responding that he won’t allow Trump to treat him like that ever again (link). John Kelly doesn’t need or want this job and is seemingly only doing it as a favor to a failing Trump, so Kelly does have the power in this dynamic. But Generals still don’t bark at the President, and moreover, Donald Trump is a lifelong bully who seethes back at anyone who approaches him aggressively. So why is Trump willing to cower to Kelly’s demands?
This may date back fifty years to when Donald Trump attended the New York Military Academy in his youth. He’s since tried to pass it off as having been virtual military service on his part, which points to just how little understanding he has of what military life is truly like. According to a Washington Post expose from a year and a half ago, Trump was abruptly transferred to different job duties during his senior year after the hazing of a freshman took place under his watch (link). This was in an era when even brazen hazing was considered normal customary behavior, so this particular bit of hazing must have been extreme.
If you’ve been through the torturous tradition of hazing, you know that it generally involves you turning around and doing the same thing to the newcomers that others did to you when you were new. This suggests that Trump was rather severely hazed when he was a freshman in military school. This would have been coming from older students in military uniform, in a context that to this day Trump seems to think was the military.
It’s entirely possible that Donald Trump is allowing General John Kelly to call the shots because he still carries a deep seated psychological fear of men in uniform. It may also explain why Trump has allowed General James Mattis to insult him in public and get away with it (link). And it may explain why Trump felt compelled to side with General H.R. McMaster in his feud with Trump’s personal pal Steve Bannon. Trump is a bully to nearly everyone, but he’s a coward toward military leaders. Somewhere inside his deeply broken psyche must lie an explanation from his past.
