Donald Trump has had it with “church lady” John Kelly
Back when Donald Trump forced Steve Bannon out the door, I predicted that the next to go might be John Kelly. It was an admittedly odd prediction, considering that Trump had just hired Kelly as his new White House Chief of Staff weeks earlier. But it seemed clear from the start the Trump and Kelly would rub each other the wrong way. Now comes word that Trump and his staff have indeed turned against Kelly, complete with assigning him a derisive nickname.
My reasoning for John Kelly having a short shelf life was that he was taking away all of Donald Trump’s favorite toys. Kelly is a straight laced retired military General, and he took the job to clean up an erratic and broken administration. He quickly fired Trump’s prized recent hire Anthony Scaramucci, and then also shoved Trump’s political confidant Steve Bannon out the door, along with Sebastian Gorka and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. The problem: these were the only people Trump liked. So it seemed inevitable that Trump would miss his hooligan buddies and blame Kelly for it. Now we’ve already arrived at that point.
According to a new article from the Washington Post, Trump’s White House staffers have already come to resent General Kelly so thoroughly that they’ve taken to calling him “the church lady” behind his back (link). This is an obvious reference to Dana Carvey’s straight laced character from Saturday Night Live.
So it’s now seemingly a question of when, and not if, Donald Trump sends John Kelly packing. The difficulty for Trump is that he’s not going to be pleased with anyone in the job, and after this he may have a hard time finding anyone willing to take it. Kelly has gotten rid of many of Trump’s most trusted people, and if Kelly is now also ousted, there will be virtually no one left.
