John Kelly -- Bringing Order to the West Wing?

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, Botkinetti said:

To lose yourself in support of that buffoon is what I don't understand.

I think the problem is is that he didn't lose himself in support of Trump, he got the courage to show his true self to the world.

This has lots of cuss words, but I think she has a point. We let ourselves get fooled into thinking this guy was somehow different and instead he is a monster who would separate children from their parents. He isn't a good person. 

 

[Botkinetti]

Thank you for linking that video. I agree . His true colours are coming out. I am no longer fooled or wondering why he said what he said. Kelly is as morally corrupt as any of them.

[formergothardite]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kelly-compromises-his-hard-won-honor_us_59fbcee9e4b01ec0dede4109

Quote

 

Today, as the anniversary of that tragedy looms, Chief of Staff Kelly, himself a retired Marine general, is only three months into managing the administration of President Donald Trump. Yet he already has been tainted by an avoidable controversy at least partly of his own making and by some historically defective public comments about the Civil War.

It seems a particularly cruel irony that the controversy revolves around a well intentioned but badly executed condolence call from Trump to the pregnant wife of a U.S. service member recently killed in combat.

 

 

Quote

But Kelly, who retired after a successful 45-year career in the Marines in a wide range of combat, command and administrative positions − and who had more experience in bereavement situations than he ever would have wished − shares substantially in the responsibility

Quote

 

Yet Trump responded to news coverage of Wilson’s account with a Twitter post accusing her of “fabricating” the details of the call. It was a blatantly false charge.

In fact, the accounts of Johnson, Jones-Johnson and Wilson were broadly consistent with a general description given by Chief of Staff Kelly in an Oct. 19 session with reporters in the White House briefing room. 

 

Quote

The words had been helpful to Kelly in a face-to-face conversation with his best friend, a fellow Marine combat veteran. But Kelly showed poor judgment in believing these kinds of words might be comforting to a young widow in a phone call with the president, a stranger to her. Nor was there any reason whatsoever to believe Trump possessed the delicate communication skills necessary to pull off such an approach.

I agree that Kelly showed very, very poor judgment in thinking those words would comfort a grieving widow or in thinking that Trump could say something like that without completely fucking it up. 

Quote

Kelly did not acknowledge the call’s failure. He did not admit that it failed to convey clearly that the president honored Sgt. Johnson’s sacrifice and was sincerely sorry for Johnson’s loss and that of her family. Nor did Kelly take responsibility for having given the president what proved to be bad advice on handling the call.

Kelly screwed up, but instead of doing the responsible thing, accepting the blame and apologizing, he decided to attack Wilson. 

Quote

 

Kelly created more problems for himself 10 days later. In a wide-ranging TV interview on the Fox News Channel, he responded to Civil War-related questions about current controversies involving public monuments and memorials to people who led the confederacy of 11 southern states that sought to preserve slavery by destroying the United States and establishing their own country.

Kelly’s perspectives sounded more like talking points for revisionists who prefer skipping over inconvenient truth

 

Yes, Kelly decided to rewrite history to make racists feel better. We are seeing the true Kelly now.

Quote

When Kelly retired from the Marines in 2016, his personal qualities and career achievements had earned him high regard, respect and admiration as a professional and as a human being. Barely 90 days into Kelly’s work for Trump, his reputation already is in jeopardy. Kelly would be well advised to bear in mind that in addition to being a terrible role model for children, Trump is an equally poor role model for adults, including a chief of staff.

I don't think Kelly learned any of his terrible beliefs from Trump, I think he was just given the courage to boldly show us his true self. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I keep hearing the song, "True Colors" over and over in my head: "White House chief of staff tried to pressure acting DHS secretary to expel thousands of Hondurans, officials say"

Spoiler

On Monday, as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to extend the residency permits of tens of thousands of Hondurans living in the United States, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly called acting secretary Elaine Duke to pressure her to expel them, according to current and former administration officials.

Duke refused to reverse her decision and was angered by what she felt was a politically driven intrusion by Kelly and Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, who also called her about the matter, according to officials with knowledge of Monday’s events. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“As with many issues, there were a variety of views inside the administration on a policy. The Acting Secretary took those views and advice on the path forward for TPS and made her decision based on the law,” DHS spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement, referring to a form of provisional residency called temporary protected status. He added that it was also “perfectly normal for them to discuss the issue before she had reached a decision.”

A White House official confirmed the calls to Duke on Monday but said Kelly’s frustration had to do “with Duke’s lack of decisiveness.” 

With the extension of the Hondurans’ residency permits, Kelly told her that the TPS decision “keeps getting kicked down the road” and that the additional delay “prevents our wider strategic goal” on immigration, the White House official said.

Duke, who was confirmed by the Senate in April, has informed Kelly that she plans to resign, the officials said. Hoffman said there is “zero factual basis” to the claim that Duke has said she will step down, and he disputed the claim that Kelly called to pressure Duke, insisting she had reached out to him to solicit advice on the TPS decision.

DHS had until the end of the day Monday to announce its plans for some 57,000 Hondurans and 2,500 Nicaraguans who were allowed to remain in the United States under TPS after Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998. 

An additional 50,000 Haitians and 200,000 Salvadorans were nervously awaiting the decision, as their residency permits will expire early next year. Trump administration officials have repeatedly cited the TPS program as an example of what they say is U.S. immigration policy gone awry, because a program designed to be temporary should not be used to grant long-term residency in the United States. 

Duke had decided to end the TPS designation for the Nicaraguans, giving them until January 2019 to leave the United States or change their immigration status. But Duke felt that she did not have enough information for the much larger group of Hondurans, so she deferred, granting them a six-month extension, administration officials said Monday when they announced the TPS decision.

As DHS officials prepared to make that announcement, Kelly made an urgent call from Japan, where he was traveling with President Trump. He was “irritated,” administration officials said, and did not want his handpicked nominee for DHS secretary, Kirstjen M. Nielsen, to face potentially uncomfortable questions about TPS during her confirmation hearing.

“He was persistent, telling her he didn’t want to kick the can down the road, and that it could hurt [Nielsen’s] nomination,” one administration official said.

Duke held her ground, the official said. “She was angry. To get a call like that from Asia, after she’d already made the decision, was a slap in the face.”

“They put massive pressure on her,” said another former official with knowledge of the call. 

Duke wanted to proceed cautiously, because the Central Americans have lived in the United States for two decades or more, and she had been contacted by former U.S. diplomats who implored her to weigh the decision carefully. 

Congress created the TPS designation in 1990 to refrain from deporting foreign nationals to nations too unstable to receive them following natural disasters, civil strife or a health crisis. Previous administrations have repeatedly renewed the residency permits every 18 months, and over the years TPS has become a target of immigration hard-liners who say the law has been abused.

Trump wants to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, replacing a model based in part on family reunification with a “merit-based” approach to favor skilled labor.

The White House official said Kelly did not mention Nielsen by name during the calls with Duke but told her that “this shouldn’t be a problem for the next secretary to deal with.”

The pressure from the White House ended up delaying Monday’s announcement, which DHS officials did not make until an 8 p.m. conference call with reporters, just hours before the deadline, as tens of thousands of immigrants and their families remained in suspense.

In public, at least, the White House has deferred questions about TPS, calling the decision a prerogative of Homeland Security officials, in consultation with the State Department. 

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to Duke essentially giving DHS a green light to send the Nicaraguans and Hondurans back, telling her that conditions in Central America had improved. 

White House officials said Kelly acknowledged during the call that the decision was Duke’s to make. But she felt the pressure amounted to a direct intervention in the process, administration officials said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the White House had given assurances that it would not interfere in the TPS decision-making process. “They told us one thing and turned around and did something completely different,” Van Hollen said in an interview. “I’m glad the acting secretary stuck to her professional opinion.”

Maryland has 22,000 TPS recipients, he said.

Duke, a DHS veteran, has informed Kelly that she will resign once Nielsen takes over, according to several officials, even though Trump has publicly asked her to remain in the deputy role. 

Nielsen, who is Kelly’s deputy at the White House and was his chief of staff when he ran DHS between January and July, appeared to breeze through her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday and did not face especially tough or contentious questioning. 

No one asked her what she planned to do with the 300,000 TPS recipients who will lose their legal status and face deportation if their residency is not renewed. Their families include an estimated 275,000 U.S.-born children.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs postponed a vote on her nomination scheduled for Thursday, citing “a large number of questions” about Nielsen’s testimony to the panel Wednesday. 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the committee chairman, said members had submitted 197 written questions for Nielsen, far more than any previous nominee. He rescheduled the committee vote for Monday.

Senate aides say the White House is pushing for a full vote on Nielsen to get her confirmed before the Thanksgiving recess.

Duke, who returned to DHS to be Kelly’s deputy earlier this year, was never among the top candidates for the secretary job, lacking the law enforcement and counterterrorism credentials typically associated with that role. But she is considered a skilled manager and has earned praise for her stewardship of the massive federal agency, which has 240,000 employees, 22 subagencies and a $40 billion budget.

Nielsen, a cybersecurity expert, began her career as a Senate staffer, then crafted legislation and policy at the Transportation Security Administration. She was a White House adviser for emergency preparedness and disaster management under President George W. Bush, a job that put her at the center of the administration’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Kelly brought Nielsen to the White House to be his deputy, and she earned a reputation as a disciplinarian , with unwavering loyalty to the retired Marine Corps general.

 

[GrumpyGran]

Meh, I'm still going with blackmail. It explains a lot, not just with Kelly but with a lot of people around dumpy. Easy peasy and something I suspect the Dump is familiar with. Just my opinion.

[Curious]

On 10/28/2017 at 11:30 AM, OtterRuletheWorld said:

The conclusion my kids have come to is a bit deeper than a simple "religious oppression is wrong", but that is part of it.

You are an insufferable prig of megalomaniac proportions.  Why you insist on being somewhere that clearly does not like you or subscribe to your beliefs is beyond me.  Don't you have other likeminded friends you can be spending time with vs being here purposely breaking pretty much our number one rule like a smug asshat?

The day we can finally ban your vile ass will be a day of celebration for all of us, I'm sure.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

28 minutes ago, Curious said:

You are an insufferable prig of megalomaniac proportions.  Why you insist on being somewhere that clearly does not like you or subscribe to your beliefs is beyond me.  Don't you have other likeminded friends you can be spending time with vs being here purposely breaking pretty much our number one rule like a smug asshat?

The day we can finally ban your vile ass will be a day of celebration for all of us, I'm sure.

I fear that day won't come soon this time. She knows we like to respect the rules and you won't ban her if she doesn't break the rules. Sigh.

[Curious]

2 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I fear that day won't come soon this time. She knows we like to respect the rules and you won't ban her if she doesn't break the rules. Sigh.

She will hang herself just like she has every time in the past.  I'm sure she is smirking every time she posts thinking she has one over on us, but she's not as smart as she thinks she is.

I can't imagine having such low self-esteem that I have to get my jollies hanging out with people that don't want me around.  It's sad, tbh.

There are plenty of places online she could fit in, but she chooses to keep coming back here to convince us how smart and superior she is

[milkteeth]

On 11/2/2017 at 9:06 AM, Botkinetti said:

Thank you for linking that video. I agree . His true colours are coming out. I am no longer fooled or wondering why he said what he said. Kelly is as morally corrupt as any of them.

 

Man, who would have thought that the person who ran a military torture prison is morally corrupt. I have said from the beginning that Kelly is a perfect fit within the Trump's White House. If anything he's scarier because he will stop these idiots from constantly tripping over their dicks while trying to enact fascism. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

On 11/10/2017 at 11:53 AM, Curious said:

You are an insufferable prig of megalomaniac proportions.  Why you insist on being somewhere that clearly does not like you or subscribe to your beliefs is beyond me.  Don't you have other likeminded friends you can be spending time with vs being here purposely breaking pretty much our number one rule like a smug asshat?

The day we can finally ban your vile ass will be a day of celebration for all of us, I'm sure.

You know, Curious, it can't be good for your health to suppress your feelings like this. You need to speak your mind a little more, let your feelings out!  (BTW, you gave me my best laugh all day!)

[GreyhoundFan]

"John Kelly must be exhausted"

Spoiler

In August, President Trump asked for a certain newspaper clipping, thus throwing the White House into the Trump version of Defcon 2. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly assigned two aides to investigate how the clip made its way to the president without being “cleared.” These aides, anonymous but clearly brave, determined that Keith Schiller, a former New York City police officer and Trump’s longtime body man, had slipped the “contraband newsprint” to the commander in chief. Soon, Schiller was gone from the White House. Kelly, a retired Marine general but an American sniper at heart, had picked off another.

This account of the “contraband newsprint” comes from Sunday’s New York Times and was written by three of the paper’s top reporters. Their reporting brings to mind Napoleon on St. Helena — his newspapers coming three months late and his days so empty that he took four hours’ worth of baths. Trump’s newspapers arrive promptly, but the rest of his reading is censored and, instead of taking four-hour baths, he devotes at least as much time to watching TV.

We also learned from the Times that Trump consumes about 12 Diet Cokes per day. A new book by former Trump campaign staffers added other culinary details. On the road, the future president typically ate for dinner two McDonald’s Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and a chocolate shake. Because the McDonald’s delivery system is both quick and direct, this diet poses a greater threat to the nation than the North Korean nuclear program.

But it is not, apparently, what the president eats that concerns Kelly. It is what he sometimes reads. Understandably, Kelly is constantly on the alert for a presidential friend slipping Trump a highly unauthorized news article. This happened over Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago. Some of Trump’s guests “passed him news clips that would never get around Kelly’s filters,” the Times reported.

These guests were probably Trump’s old pals from New York and Palm Beach, billionaires with a nose for the oncoming socialist apocalypse who fear the president does not know how crooked Hillary Clinton really is or that the press is still insisting that Trump lost the popular vote or maintaining that it was his voice on that “Access Hollywood” tape when, upon repeated hearing, it just could be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Trump himself begins the day commendably early. (It’s the farmer in him.) The Times says he rises at 5:30 and turns on the TV. For some reason, he watches CNN — monitoring fake news, no doubt — and then self-medicates with “Fox & Friends.” Later, in an updated version of “hate week” from George Orwell’s “1984,” he clicks on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” His friends suspect the program’s critical approach “fires him up for the day.”

Thus stoked, our commander in chief sallies forth to meet with probably the most illustrious collection of aides since Groucho hooked up with Chico and Harpo. The group includes Ivanka Trump, of the world of fashion; Jared Kushner, late of New York real estate; Hope Hicks, formerly of the Trump Organization; and, for some reason, H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser. What he knows about real estate or fashion is not at all clear.

Then the president resumes a day of strenuous TV viewing. The Times interviewed 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress for the article and report ed that Trump spends four to eight hours a day watching cable news. Since the shows are mostly about him, he must recognize cable news as an extension of his old reality show, only he cannot fire Kim Jong Un. He can, however, insult him.

At the White House, Trump controls the remote control. This, it turns out, is the true “football” of this administration — comparable to the one that accompanies the president everywhere and contains nuclear codes. “No one touches the remote control except Mr. Trump and the technical support staff,” the Times reported.

I confess that by the end of the article, I found myself feeling sorry for the harried Kelly. He spends 14 hours of his day at his task, reining in a White House staff that once felt free to just drop in on the Oval Office, possibly interrupting “Hannity” or something equally important. As the Times also reported, Kelly not only monitors Trump’s phone calls but sometimes listens in. I finished the article no longer thinking of Napoleon in exile but of Jack Valenti, Lyndon Johnson’s aide, who said he slept better at night “because Lyndon Johnson is my president.”

It’s a wonder Kelly sleeps at all.

I think it's unfair to the Marx Brothers to compare them to Jared and Ivanka.

[fraurosena]

Good op-ed in the NYT on the Chief of Staff.

John Kelly, Deacon of Deportation

Quote

People correctly direct their ire about Donald Trump’s hostile, racist, anti-immigrant policies at Trump himself because, after all, this starts at the top.

But there is someone else in the administration, behind the scenes and in the shadows, who deserves more scrutiny and more condemnation for this administration’s approach to immigration: Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Kelly is often referred to as the man who was brought to the West Wing to impose must-needed discipline on a chaotic White House. He was the access granter and mood regulator for Trump. He was the adult to Trump’s child. He was the former general who had honorably served his country, now brought in to save it.

In the most recent kerfuffle over Trump’s torpedoing of a bipartisan DACA deal, in which he made a racist attack against immigrants from African countries and Haiti, it became increasingly clear that Kelly was instrumental in influencing Trump to flip from a stance of openness and compromise back to a celestial alignment with immigration hard-liners.

As The Associated Press reported this week, after Trump requested a briefing on a bipartisan immigration deal sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Dick Durbin, a Democrat:

“Chief of staff John Kelly phoned Trump from Capitol Hill to advise him against accepting the proposal, and the president summoned conservative Republican negotiators to help build a united front against the plan, which would have provided some border security funding as well as protection from deportation for immigrants brought to the country as children and now here illegally.”

Graham was not happy about the ambush or the reversal and pointed out who he believed to be the source of the problem, telling reporters, “I think somebody on his staff gave him really bad advice between 10 o’clock to 12 o’clock on Thursday.” Graham went on to say that Kelly is “a fine man, but he’s part of the staff.”

Actually, Kelly is following the Kelly-Trump immigration doctrine.

This was just the latest incident in Kelly’s revealing track record on immigration since Trump has been in office.

Kelly is no angel. He’s more like the devil’s handmaiden. As The Times’s Glenn Thrush reported in October, Kelly seems to be “moving from the role of quiet backstage manager to open partisan.”

His hostility toward immigration has been evident from the beginning of his time in the administration.

When Kelly was brought on as chief of staff in July, The Nation warned, “John Kelly’s promotion is a disaster for immigrants,” pointing out that in just six months as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, he turned it into “a deportation machine.”

The Nation went on:

“Indeed, in the last six months, Kelly has turned the DHS into one of the most productive arms of the Trump administration. Kelly managed to translate much of Trump’s brazen anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric into actual policy. And if the numbers are any indication, Kelly has certainly flourished. Arrests since Trump took office in February increased by 40 percent over the prior year. But perhaps more important than the numbers is Kelly’s impact on immigrant communities, where apprehension and fear now reign.”

While at the D.H.S., Kelly even considered separating immigrant parents from their accompanying children if they enter the country illegally. As The Times reported:

“Still, the prospect of breaking a sacred bond between parent and child has not been an easy decision. Mr. Kelly said early this year that he was considering the move, but after an uproar from immigrant advocates and some members of Congress, he said that families would be separated only in extreme circumstances, such as when the child was in danger because of the parent.”

One of Kelly’s primary targets has been the Temporary Protected Status program.

As The Times has reported: “The protection for Haitians was most recently extended in May, by John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary at the time. He allowed only a six-month extension, a shorter one than is typical, saying that the Haitians ‘need to start thinking about returning.’”

The Times also reported that in November, Kelly “unsuccessfully tried to pressure the Homeland Security Department to end a program that allows hundreds of thousands of people from countries affected by natural disasters or violence to live in the United States without fear of being deported, according to people familiar with the discussions.”

Many of those countries have populations that are either black or brown. Those were the countries Trump vulgarly disparaged. So why are Trump and Kelly so dogged in their opposition to these particular programs?

I, along with many others, have pointed out Trump’s obvious racism, but Kelly’s relationship to race is also troubling.

In October, Kelly said that “Robert E. Lee was an honorable man” and that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War,” displaying a staggering ignorance about the conflict and a racial insensitivity that marginalized the centrality of slavery to the war.

Furthermore, while at D.H.S., Kelly appointed the Rev. Jamie Johnson to lead the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. It was later disclosed that in 2008 Johnson had said on a radio show that black people were anti-Semitic because they were envious of Jewish people. Johnson also said America’s black community “had turned America’s major cities into slums because of laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity.”

I am no fan of John Kelly. As I have said before, I think he is one of the most dangerous men in America. On this issue of Trump’s racist immigration and deportation policy, he is not only complicit, he is a co-conspirator.

I agree wholeheartedly with the author's assessment. Kelly is indeed one of the most dangerous men in America, and not only complicit, but a co-conspirator on the racist immigration and deportation policy.

[AmazonGrace]

It's pretty much a given now, I think.. You just can't work in this White House unless  you're getting something out of it. Either you're getting huge tax cuts or you like him because he has been somewhat successful in implementing more racist policies, or both.

[Howl]

My impression is that the government is shut down due to Kelly telling Chuck Shumer that his proposal was too liberal. 

I hope Trump will just sign the more liberal option in order to get to his party at Mar-a-Lago.  People have paid yuuuuuuge $$$$$ to attend and Trump doesn't want to be embarrassed. 

[GrumpyGran]

54 minutes ago, Howl said:

My impression is that the government is shut down due to Kelly telling Chuck Shumer that his proposal was too liberal. 

I hope Trump will just sign the more liberal option in order to get to his party at Mar-a-Lago.  People have paid yuuuuuuge $$$$$ to attend and Trump doesn't want to be embarrassed. 

That's my understanding too. So now he has his base screaming at him, Kelly trying to get his way with immigration, Congress with their plan and Democrats just saying WTH. And he doesn't understand the issue so no wonder he's changing his mind every five minutes. Then Dump blames Democrats.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Then Dump blames Democrats.

And I bet he's mad that he can't blame Obama or Hillary for this one. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

12 hours ago, fraurosena said:

And I bet he's mad that he can't blame Obama or Hillary for this one. 

He'll probably blame them anyway. Somehow. 

[nvmbr02]

Is it possible John Kelly is on the way out? 

 

Vanity Fair: “Another Nut Job”: Trump Fumes That Kelly “Thinks He’s Running Things”

Quote

Donald Trump’s relationship with John Kelly, his chief of staff, fraught from the beginning, may finally have gone past the point of no return. Two prominent Republicans in frequent contact with the White House told me that Trump has discussed choosing Kelly’s successor in recent days, asking a close friend what he thought about David Urban, a veteran Washington lobbyist and political operative who helped engineer Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania. Ivanka is also playing a central role in the search, quietly field-testing ideas with people. “Ivanka is the most worried about it. She’s trying to figure who replaces Kelly,” a person who’s spoken with her said.

Kelly’s departure likely isn’t imminent, sources said. “He wants to stay longer than Reince [Priebus],” an outside adviser said. Trump can also hardly afford another high-level staff departure, which would trigger days of negative news cycles. “This could be like [Jeff] Sessions,” one of the Republicans explained, referring to Trump’s festering frustration about not being able to replace his attorney general.

But the prospect of a Trump-Kelly rupture became more probable as news of their clashes over immigration leaked. Last week, Kelly reportedly infuriated Trump when he told Fox News that Trump had “evolved” on his position to build a southern border wall. Kelly further catalyzed Trump’s ire when he told Democratic lawmakers that Trump was “uninformed” when he made his campaign promise to build the wall. The next morning Trump rebutted his chief of staff with a tweet: “The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it.”

I would be happy to see him gone. He is a stain on the US military.  I am not so sure that it will happen soon though. I do think Trump is frustrated with him and the attention he has been getting in recent weeks. Giving  media attention (good or bad) to the various "nut jobs' in the White House may prove to be the easiest way to get rid of them...

[onekidanddone]

4 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

I would be happy to see him gone. He is a stain on the US military.  I am not so sure that it will happen soon though. I do think Trump is frustrated with him and the attention he has been getting in recent weeks. Giving  media attention (good or bad) to the various "nut jobs' in the White House may prove to be the easiest way to get rid of them...

I'd love to see them all go en-mass and have Trump try and spin why he has to replace his entire staff all at once, or in a short period of time. Baring that, I'd rather Miller go first. Loudly, with lots of tantrum tweets.

[nvmbr02]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

I'd love to see them all go en-mass and have Trump try and spin why he has to replace his entire staff all at once, or in a short period of time. Baring that, I'd rather Miller go first. Loudly, with lots of tantrum tweets.

Quite honestly, I am not sure who is worse. Kelly and Miller are both vile. I think Kelly is wrapped in a prettier package and a bit quieter in his beliefs. But I also think being a 4 star general gives him an air of respectability that is quite dangerous.

[Howl]

Vanity Fair is speculating that Kelly is on the way out, but may end up hanging on like Jeff Sessions, because dumping him would look really bad.  Kelly has pissed off Trump in a number of ways, Trump is bitching about him to his friends and Ivanka's looking around for a replacement.  The clown car rolls on. 

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, Howl said:

Vanity Fair is speculating that Kelly is on the way out, but may end up hanging on like Jeff Sessions, because dumping him would look really bad.  Kelly has pissed off Trump in a number of ways, Trump is bitching about him to his friends and Ivanka's looking around for a replacement.  The clown car rolls on. 

I'd rather see Miller go first, then Kelly. I don't like what Kelly does generally and his racism is abhorrent but Miller shares the same racism but is in this for himself. Kelly has at least put a collar on Dump as far as the NK lunacy. And gotten rid of a handful of people who's salaries I was not happy paying.

[GreyhoundFan]

Aw, poor widdle TT doesn't like to be told what he can and can't do: "Trump bristles under some of his orderly chief of staff’s restrictions"

Spoiler

When White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly stopped by the Oval Office to see President Trump late Wednesday, Kelly said he couldn’t stay long because reporters were in his office waiting for a briefing on immigration policy.

Deciding not to leave the session to his top aide, Trump walked down the hall minutes later and made a surprise appearance in Kelly’s office. The president proceeded to field a rush of questions on the Russia investigation with answers that rattled his lawyers and senior aides and left Kelly dealing with the fallout.

The episode illustrates the unusual and sometimes strained relationship between the garrulous president and his second chief of staff, who has imposed sharp restrictions on many of Trump’s friends — and even his children — as Kelly seeks to direct the flow of information and influence in the Oval Office.

Trump has at times bristled at the restrictions and, in recent weeks, has openly chafed at the idea that Kelly, not he, is effectively running the business of the White House, associates say. Kelly stayed behind in Washington this week while Trump traveled to the Davos global summit in Switzerland — a change of plans that prompted notice among those close to Trump.

Yet the two also remain close in many ways, making the up-and-down dynamics a guessing game for those who work with them. While the two men fight and swear at each other at times, Kelly sees Trump more than anyone else, and confidants say the volatility in their relationship is natural. Trump has often interrupted meetings to ask Kelly’s opinion and has told others he respects the former Marine general’s time in the military and his stature, according to White House officials and people who know them.

“Is that right?” Trump asked Kelly a number of times during a recent meeting, seeking his perspective as they met with Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), according to people with knowledge of the meeting. 

Trump critics have questioned whether Kelly’s style of managing the president is always best. While he has sometimes kept bad information from getting to the president, he has also intervened to block bipartisan deals that Trump wanted to strike on immigration and reinforced some of the president’s most contentious positions. Several of Trump’s most controversial and racially incendiary moments — such as his remarks last summer after riots in Charlottesville and his recent disparaging comments about African nations — also came as Kelly looked on.

Trump has lashed out when he feels Kelly is getting too much credit or taking too much of the spotlight, friends and associates said. The president was furious last week when Kelly said Trump was “uninformed” in his call for a border wall during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two people familiar with those discussions, who requested anonymity to describe Trump’s reaction.

“A lot of people know the border wall is the dumbest idea,” said Chris Whipple, author of a book on presidential chiefs of staff. “Kelly made the mistake of saying it aloud on Fox.” 

Trump has joked to associates that Kelly has cut his phone line, outside advisers said. He has told friends that he can come by “only if the general approves.” And the president has complained that he never sees staff members anymore and occasionally sits in the office alone, aides said. 

“As long as you’re being useful to the president, then he’s more likely to keep you around,” said Ed Brookover, a longtime campaign adviser. “But you can’t ever forget that we have initials, too: JFS. We’re ‘just freaking staff.’ ”

One reason Trump stays in the personal residence section of the White House so late every morning — sometimes until after 10 a.m. — is because he has access to his phone and has fewer restrictions, associates say. Kelly has told others he is fine with such “executive time,” as it is referred to on his schedule. 

“General Kelly is not here to manage the president,” said presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway. “He’s here to manage the paper and people flow to the president to ensure that the president has ample time to listen, to think, to deliberate before he makes a decision that impacts people’s lives and livelihood.”

Kelly has slashed security clearances into the West Wing and reduced the number of people on the access list that once allowed relative free roaming within the White House, officials said. People such as former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have seen their access reduced, with Kelly requesting that they work through him on all visits.

After Lewandowski had a lengthy meeting at the White House with Kelly this month, he went to say hello to a friend from the campaign, White House counsel Donald McGahn, according to people familiar with the incident. When Jim Carroll, a White House lawyer, saw Lewandowski sitting in the waiting area without an appointment with McGahn, he told the operative that he had to leave and offered to escort him out, the people said, requesting anonymity to describe sensitive exchanges. They added that escorts for all guests are now part of White House culture.

Kelly has told others there was too much wandering around without escorts, and now everyone has to sign in and say where they are going. He remains amazed that Michael Wolff, author of a controversial tell-all book released this month, was able to sit around in the West Wing for countless hours last year, aides say.

The chief of staff has told people that Trump’s schedule shouldn’t be as packed as it was, and has encouraged the president to show him tweets, though he has told others he can’t do much about them, according to White House officials. Kelly has routinely listened as Trump rages about the Russia investigation, a senior administration official says, and acts as a “sounding board.” 

Kelly brings fewer issues to the president than Reince Priebus, his first chief of staff, did, and often will advise Trump of issues after they have been handled.

He has curbed the role of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, in the White House, aides say, and has at times questioned Ivanka Trump’s work on Capitol Hill. A senior White House official said Kelly was supportive of her approach. 

Kelly’s views on personnel and policy are shared only with a group of people he trusts, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen; Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, also a former general. At the White House, he confides in White House aide Johnny DeStefano, deputy Joe Hagin and Rob Porter, the president’s staff secretary. Kelly calls Nielsen “Secretary Kirstjen” occasionally, reflecting the closeness of their relationship.

Kelly’s relationship with the Cabinet in which he once served is mostly businesslike. He has reached out to and met personally with several members in recent months, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, in an effort to bolster those relationships, according to a person who has helped to arrange dinners. Kelly frowns upon Cabinet members making overtures to Trump without communicating with him first.

A cross-section of aides in the West Wing say they think Kelly has made things better. 

“In terms of helping the president, he brings order to a pretty chaotic situation,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “There is not enough adjectives to describe him because General Kelly has done a really good job putting in a process for the president to make better decisions.”

Trump, however, prefers a free-flowing style and is mercurial, changing his position intermittently. Time and again, he will see an issue on TV and want something done, leaving Kelly in a tough spot. 

“Trump of all people needs more managing than any of his predecessors,” Whipple said. “But he gets tired of people quickly. Six months with Donald Trump is an eternity. Just ask Reince Priebus.” 

Six minutes with the TT would be an eternity.

[Howl]

  I agree with those who have posted above about John Kelly.  He's out of control. What kind of arrogant ass calls DoJ about how they want an investigation to turn out, when he himself is an agent of the person being investigated?  I'm sputtering a bit because I can't quite wrap my head around it, because it's so far beyond arrogance, it's an imperial attitude. 

Trump hones in on someone's worst traits,  puts the person in a position that will allow that person to amplify those worst traits, which leads to situations like John Kelly....Misha Flynn also comes to mind....oh, and Bannon and a long line of others.  

I will not need to watch the State of the Union Dysfunction tonight.  Hmmmm, I don't think Jared has  brought peace to the Middle East yet, solved the nation's infrastructure problems, or, what was that other one?  Restructured the entire government.  Wonder if he'll address that?

 

 

[candygirl200413]

I can't even put him on a list of who is the biggest POS in the adminstration cause they all should be number 1:

 

I had to scream in a pillow cause I'm just so damn pissed right now.