John Kelly -- Bringing Order to the West Wing?

[Howl]

Kelly may also be there to monitor if Trump is seriously considering or making actual moves to fire Mueller, and talk him out of it or outright prevent it. 

The Senate is working on legislation that would protect Mueller from undue political influence and from being fired. 

AP: Senators To Introduce Bill To Protect Robert Mueller

Kelly will have some time to whip everybody into shape, because school's out for the summer: 

Summer Recess (from Heavy.com)

Quote

July 28th was the House of Representatives’ last day before the August recess; their recess lasts from July 29th all the way until September 5th. That’s how long the Senate’s recess was originally supposed to last, but earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would delay their August recess two weeks. That meant that the Senate’s last day would be Friday, August 11th, and they will return on September 5th.

 

Edited August 4, 2017 by Howl

[AmazonGrace]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/john-kelly-chief-of-staff-trump.html

John Kelly Quickly Moves to Impose Military Discipline on White House

By GLENN THRUSH, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and EILEEN SULLIVAN

August 3, 2017
 

Quote

 

WASHINGTON — In his six months as Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly often described the White House as one of the most dysfunctional organizations he had ever seen, complained to colleagues and allies about its meddling, incompetence and recklessness, and was once so angry he briefly considered quitting.

Now as President Trump’s chief of staff, he is doing something about it — with a suddenness and force that have upended the West Wing.

Mr. Kelly cuts off rambling advisers midsentence. He listens in on conversations between cabinet secretaries and the president. He has booted lingering staff members out of high-level meetings, and ordered the doors of the Oval Office closed to discourage strays. He fired Anthony Scaramucci, the bombastic New Yorker who was briefly the communications director, and has demanded that even Mr. Trump’s family, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, check with him if they want face time with the president.

On Wednesday, his third day on the job, he delivered a message about respecting chains of command, backing the decision of Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, to dismiss Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Kushner ally and staff member on the National Security Council. It was a move Mr. Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, had long opposed, according to two administration officials.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Whether Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, will succeed in imposing military discipline on the faction-ridden White House remains in doubt; Mr. Trump has never been known to follow anybody’s direction, in Trump Tower or the White House. But Mr. Trump has never encountered anyone quite like Mr. Kelly, a combat veteran whose forceful management style and volatile temper are a match for the president’s.

“He’d basically look at me and say, ‘I think that proposal is four-letter-word nuts,’” said Leon E. Panetta, who as defense secretary made Mr. Kelly his chief military aide. “John is the kind of guy who will look you in the eye and tell you what the hell he is thinking. The real question is whether the president will give him the authority he needs to do the job.”

People close to Mr. Kelly said he resisted weeks of entreaties by the president, beginning in May, before finally agreeing to replace Reince Priebus out of a sense of soldierly duty. That he understands the sobering realities of his new deployment could be seen in his unsmiling mien while sitting next to Mr. Trump for a photo opportunity this week.

Among Mr. Kelly’s immediate challenges: brokering peace between warring factions in the West Wing; plugging leaks about internal activities; establishing a disciplined policy-making process; and walling off the Russia investigations.

Mr. Kelly, 67, has told his new employees that he was hired to manage the staff, not the president. He will not try to change Mr. Trump’s Twitter or TV-watching habits. But he has also said he wants to closely monitor the information the president consumes, quickly counter dubious news stories with verified facts, and limit the posse of people urging Mr. Trump to tweet something they feel passionately about.

He has privately acknowledged that he cannot control the president and that his authority would be undermined if he tried and failed. Instead, he is intent on cosseting Mr. Trump with bureaucratic competence and forcing staff members to keep to their lanes, a challenge in an administration defined by tribal loyalties to power players like Mr. Kushner and Mr. Bannon.

“Several times I’ve been on phone conversations with the president over the last couple of days and General Kelly has been on those conversations as well,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Thursday when asked if Mr. Kelly was making a mark.

The Trump White House is a judge-a-book-by-its-cover workplace, and staff members have been struck by Mr. Kelly’s bearing: tall, stern and commanding a respect Mr. Priebus never did. People close to Mr. Kelly said they expected him to methodically assess his new staff before making more drastic changes — and he has told people that he wants to improve morale before attacking the organizational chart.

Mr. Kelly has not been shy about letting Mr. Trump’s staff members know when they screwed up, ripping into West Wing aides during the chaos surrounding the president’s original travel ban when he was at the Department of Homeland Security. While he supported the broad policy goals, he was furious that he and his sprawling agency’s staff were caught off guard by a directive that was conceived and carried out by inexperienced aides in the White House, according to several longtime Trump advisers.

People close to Mr. Kelly said he also bristled repeatedly at efforts by Mr. Bannon and Stephen Miller, the president’s senior adviser, to install people they liked in his department. Mr. Kelly eventually won pitched battles over who would become director of Customs and Border Protection and head of the Secret Service, officials said. But Mr. Bannon has had a longstanding alliance with Mr. Kelly, supporting many of his other appointments.

In May, Mr. Kelly considered resigning after Mr. Trump’s firing of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, telling Mr. Comey in a phone call that he was thinking about doing so to protest the president’s actions, according to a former law enforcement official familiar with the conversation.

A senior White House official briefed on the exchange by Mr. Kelly said he never threatened to quit, but confirmed that he called Mr. Comey.

Days later, Mr. Kelly objected strenuously to the decision by Thomas P. Bossert, Mr. Trump’s Homeland Security adviser in the White House, to take control of the response to a global cyberattack — a role traditionally played by Mr. Kelly and his department’s cybersecurity division.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Kelly is viewed with a mix of admiration for his long military service and disappointment that he has been too willing to embrace and defend Mr. Trump’s more controversial policies, especially on illegal immigration.

In closed-door meetings with House members in March, Democrats questioned Mr. Kelly about aggressive immigration sweeps at churches and hospitals. The frustration grew as Mr. Kelly disputed that such sweeps were happening, even in the face of enlarged photos showing a Homeland Security vehicle parked on the grounds of Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.

“He’ll push back hard,” said Representative Lou Correa, Democrat of California, who presented the photographic evidence to Mr. Kelly during the meeting.

The next month, Mr. Kelly offered a taste of his blunt approach, telling lawmakers they could “shut up” if they did not like the laws his department was charged with enforcing.

“He’s never come to Capitol Hill and blown smoke to senators and congressmen,” said Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and former Army officer who is close to Mr. Kelly.

Dealing with Mr. Trump’s family, especially Mr. Kushner, will not be so simple.

In an interview in May, Mr. Kelly came to the defense of the president’s son-in-law, who has an office in the West Wing as a White House adviser, against charges that he had tried to set up an inappropriate communications channel with Russia. He called Mr. Kushner “a great guy, a decent guy.”

In discussions with Mr. Trump about moving to the White House, Mr. Kelly also insisted that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, who is also a White House adviser, report to him. They both agreed, in part because they wanted to see Mr. Priebus ejected as quickly as possible, and in part because they recognized Mr. Trump’s presidency needed to be professionalized.

A lingering personnel question gave Mr. Kelly a chance to assert his position at the top of the West Wing. Aides said the ouster of Mr. Cohen-Watnick was intended as a show of confidence from Mr. Kelly to Mr. McMaster. Mr. Kushner did not object to the decision, and had conceded that Mr. McMaster was going to fire his friend three weeks ago, according to a person close to the Trump family.

Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, who has known Mr. Kelly for two decades, said the fact that the president agreed to have family members report to the new chief of staff was “a really important first step.”

“The question is, does it last?” he added. “But it sends a powerful signal to the rest of the people in the White House.”

Mr. Gates, who was also Mr. Kelly’s boss as defense secretary, recalled the times he sat with Mr. Kelly at the Pentagon across a small conference table once used by Jefferson Davis when he was secretary of war. Mr. Gates would tell Mr. Kelly what he was planning to do and Mr. Kelly would say, “You could do it that way.”

What that really meant, Mr. Gates said, was “that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” Mr. Kelly would then offer another — often better — option, Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Panetta, who served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff before he went to the Pentagon, said he urged Mr. Kelly to buy a “big bottle of Scotch” when he agreed to take the job.

A White House spokeswoman did not know if he had gotten around to buying one yet, but said the new chief of staff preferred Irish whiskey.

Ron Nixon contributed reporting from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.

 

I have misgivings about anyone who would run a racist DHS and fawn over Jared in interviews but this is funny:

Quote

 

Mr. Gates would tell Mr. Kelly what he was planning to do and Mr. Kelly would say, “You could do it that way.”

What that really meant, Mr. Gates said, was “that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

 

 

[Howl]

Well, this is the perspective on Kelly that I was looking for; a sense of who he is and what alliances he has.   He did manage to fire Cohen-Watnick, so that could show he has influence over both Bannon and Kushner.   But anyone tight with Bannon is ultimately bad, bad news. 

Kelly sounds like a tradeoff.  Stop the craziness in the WH, but he's a hard core right winger for sure.  Perhaps he better placed in the WH and not DHS. 

Sigh.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Here’s a sword, General Kelly. Use it on the White House lies."

Spoiler

Gen. John Kelly was just joking, of course, when he handed President Trump a saber at a U.S. Coast Guard Academy ceremony in May and offered a suggestion: “Use that on the press, sir.”

But now, as Trump’s new chief of staff, Kelly needs a few weapons of his own — not so much to control wayward reporters but to bring discipline to a White House that often seems uncontrollable, especially when it comes to telling untruths.

So far, so good. He’s fired the potty-mouthed narcissist Anthony Scaramucci as communications director and showed no interest in retaining the hapless Sean Spicer. And he reportedly is forbidding West Wing staff from trotting into the Oval Office with news reports intended to infuriate the president and fire up his tweet machine.

In short, Kelly doesn’t mess around — as noted by “Late Night” host Seth Meyers after Trump predicted “a good time” with Kelly in charge.

“I’m sorry, but John Kelly doesn’t look like a guy you bring in ‘to have a good time,’ ” Meyers said. “John Kelly looks like a guy who introduces himself by saying, ‘I’m not here to have a good time.’ ”

But can the general take on the hardest job of all — hacking through the thicket of lies that the Trump White House produces? You can have all the discipline and efficiency in the world, but it won’t do much good without a basis in reality that starts at the top.

The prospects for that are grim.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has relentlessly catalogued the president’s prevarications. A few months ago, the New York Times produced an astonishingly long list of the lies since he took office, and described the problem:

“There is simply no precedent for an American president to spend so much time telling untruths. Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers. No other president — of either party — has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.”

As Kelly, under the president’s direction, looks for a communications director to replace Scaramucci, the truth problem looms large. How do you maintain credibility and, yes, integrity when the boss is wandering through the fields of fantasy?

Spicer, after all, got off to a terrible start when on the first day of his tenure as press secretary he vehemently defended the president’s easily disprovable falsehoods about the size of the inaugural crowds.

It’s unclear how Scaramucci would have handled that, but the first signs didn’t bode well as he dodged an early question about Trump’s false statements on voter fraud. “If the president says it, there’s usually some level of truth to that,” he offered.

The Mooch’s memo about his new job, published in draft form last week, gave lip service to working toward better media relationships. But he showed his hand when he suggested a broader role for one of the most outrageously truth-averse Trumpsters.

“Use Kellyanne Conway more,” Scaramucci urged. “She has consistently been the President’s most effective spokesperson, and she provides a direct link to the President’s historic electoral victory.”

Remember the “alternative facts” episode? That was vintage Conway, defending the president on inaugural crowd size, blissfully unencumbered by the weight of reality.

It never stops. Just days ago, Trump claimed to have received phone calls praising him from the head of the Boy Scouts and the president of Mexico.

His new press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, acknowledged these calls never happened, and condemned lying “from the podium or any other place,” but stopped short of calling the statements what they are: “I wouldn’t say it was a lie. That’s a pretty bold accusation.”

Kelly, though, is a force to be reckoned with. As The Post’s James Hohmann pointed out last week, the former homeland security secretary may have convinced the president he didn’t need to build a physical border wall with Mexico; called James B. Comey just after Trump fired him to express his dismay; and reached out to prominent Democrats in preparation for the fight over tax policy.

Kelly may well be Trump’s best hope for saving the White House from utter chaos. A grounding in reality — yes, truth — needs to be a part of that salvation.

For inspiration, Kelly could consult a Nixon-era John Lennon song from the year the future general turned 21: “Gimme Some Truth.” (“I’ve had enough of watching scenes from schizophrenic egocentric paranoiac prima donnas/All I want is the truth, just give me some truth.”)

More realistically, he could turn to the Marine Corps values that presumably guided his decorated military career. The bedrock, they state, is honor: “It is the quality that empowers Marines to exemplify the ultimate in ethical and moral behavior: to never lie, cheat, or steal; to abide by an uncompromising code of integrity. . . . ”

It’s hard to imagine how that admirable ethos and this mendacious White House can coexist for very long. If there’s a sword involved, Kelly may have to fall on it.

The Seth Meyers bit made me laugh. I agree that Kelly doesn't look like a guy who is here to have a good time.

[onekidanddone]

How long before Kelly runs for the hills to keep his sanity from taters. 

[GrumpyGran]

I'm curious about what's going to happen in the next two weeks. You know this guy isn't on vacation. But the work going on looks serious! We've got heavy equipment. So was everyone told to go on vacation?

If I were Kelly, I'd be paying attention to who wouldn't take the time off and I'd also do some "housekeeping." In everyone's offices. Finding bugs or planting them?

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "Kelly cannot treat Trump like a normal president"

Spoiler

Judging by the last few days, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has made little progress in creating an aura of calm, sanity and competence. In the last few days we’ve seen a never-ending stream of threats, boasts, accusations and whiny denials (I am NOT losing my base!) from President Trump.

Trump embarrassed himself and unnerved Americans on Tuesday by echoing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s belligerent tone, rekindling concerns that he will either overreact or just not be taken seriously in an international standoff that could spin dangerously out of control. This morning there was no improvement. The Post reports:

President Trump continued to forcefully threaten North Korea on Wednesday, asserting that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is “far stronger and more powerful than ever before.”

Trump’s projection of U.S. nuclear strength comes during a moment of rhetorical brinkmanship between him and North Korea’s erratic leader, Kim Jong-Un. Trump used extraordinarily chilling language for a U.S. president on Tuesday afternoon when he warned that North Korea’s nuclear provocations would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

His boast is as gratuitous as it is inaccurate in suggesting he improved our arsenal in just seven months. (“Trump’s suggestion that the nuclear arsenal already has been modernized under his presidency is misleading at best, considering the process could take years. On Jan. 27, one week after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order directing the Defense Department to launch a Nuclear Posture Review, a major undertaking that will set his administration’s nuclear policy.”) It’s this kind of inaccurate, self-aggrandizing utterance that leads to a loss of confidence in the president’s ability to navigate through treacherous waters.

This sort of slow-motion meltdown and loss of discipline is precisely what Kelly was brought on to prevent. But, unfortunately, he seems to have a view of his job that is ill-suited to serve his current boss. The Post reports that he is acting as an honest broker, not as a moderating or restraining force:

Passing up opportunities to craft policies, Kelly has acted as a neutral mediator — encouraging key players to argue their points, ensuring proposals are fully vetted and then presenting the options to the president. … White House officials said Kelly sees his role as executing the president’s orders, not modulating them — and they were quick to point out that Kelly managed some of Trump’s most controversial priorities with stubborn determination, including immigration and border enforcement, as secretary of homeland security.

And that’s the nub of the problem. Kelly, used to saluting and taking orders, seems unwilling to manage up, to persuade Trump to put down his phone, to stop obsessing over TV coverage and, most important, to avoid inflaming the North Korea situation. Kelly’s method would work in a run-of-the-mill White House where the real problem was, for example, lack of coordination between the White House and Cabinet departments, or meetings that ran too long or reached no resolution. The main problem in this administration has always been Trump — and the unwillingness or inability of anyone, including relatives, to restrain his worst instincts. The time to stop humoring Trump, telling him what he wants to hear and shielding him from bad news, has long since passed.

Kelly has been a passive bystander as Trump has ratcheted up his war rhetoric. The results, former State Department official and #NeverTrump-er Eliot Cohen points out, have been disastrous:

Maybe it is all bluff. If it is, Trump will inflict a dangerous wound to American foreign policy, for his threats will probably be shown to be hollow. If loose words about fire and fury are a mere negotiating tactic, they will not deliver what the United States desires, because the North Koreans have every reason to want nuclear weapons, and have shown an impressive unwillingness to yield to pressure, even from their main ally and trading partner China, in acquiring them. …

It is equally conceivable, and more likely, however, [if military action is actually taken] that the outcome could be a ferocious war that would lead to the overthrow of the North Korean regime, but could kill hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of America’s Asian allies, and thousands of American troops and their numerous dependents.

Kelly apparently has not impressed upon Trump the impossibility of conducting a war on short notice. “The United States is simply not ready for a war in Korea, even if one were the lesser of two evils. It is not ready for wartime diplomacy to manage fearful or furious allies, let alone the Chinese and the Russians,” Cohen explains. “The Department of State does not even have a nominee for the position of assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and its secretary presides over a demoralized and shrinking corps of diplomats. The American military may have the aircraft to hammer North Korean nuclear sites, but it is also fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and returning to Europe to bolster deterrence there. The armed services have suffered years of sequester-imposed spending freezes that mean that they have not refurbished their arsenals or engaged in adequate training.”

Making the trains run on time in an administration in which the conductor is reckless, unskilled and irrational misses the point, to put it mildly. If Kelly is to save Trump’s presidency and serve his country, he has to step out of his role as executing the president’s will and start shaping the president’s behavior. He needs to be able to level with the president, explain how Trump is diminishing his own authority and give him some easy-to-follow directions as to how to conduct himself in a crisis. If Kelly won’t do that or Trump won’t listen, the administration, as we have seen this week, will continue barreling out of control. That puts Trump in political peril and the country in real danger.

She's right. The first couple of days, Kelly seemed to be taking the bully by the horns, but since then, it's been pretty bad.

[sawasdee]

I hated how Kelly operated at DHS, but I actually feel sorry for him now. He is a career military man, used to making the orders of his superiors work - even if they are not optimal.

Now, he needs/is being asked to control an ignorant, ill-informed, temperamentally unfit commander. This is totally outside his experience. He will never have worked for or with anyone as uncontrolled, injudicious  and unheeding as tRump. To ask him to control the TT's imprudence may be his bridge too far.

[AmazonGrace]

They shouldn't have hired a general, they should have hired Jo Frost. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@AmazonGrace -- Yes!! I would love to see her put him on "the naughty spot". She'd definitely outlast his tantrums. I remember one episode where she took away all the TVs, computers, and cell phones. The teenagers were furious. She basically told them to get over it. Losing his TV and phone would probably cause the tangerine manbaby to have a stroke.

[apple1]

52 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@AmazonGrace -- Yes!! I would love to see her put him on "the naughty spot". She'd definitely outlast his tantrums. I remember one episode where she took away all the TVs, computers, and cell phones. The teenagers were furious. She basically told them to get over it. Losing his TV and phone would probably cause the tangerine manbaby to have a stroke.

Well - SOMEBODY needs to take away his phone (among other actions...)

[GrumpyGran]

19 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

They shouldn't have hired a general, they should have hired Jo Frost. 

 

YEEESSSS! Jo would kick his ass. Melania needs to find her now!

This is how Kelly needs to "handle" him. 

[onekidanddone]

On 8/9/2017 at 4:42 PM, apple1 said:

Well - SOMEBODY needs to take away his phone (among other actions...)

Take his phone and give him a muzzle.

[fraurosena]

Yeah, Jo-jo would find the tangerine toddler's behavior totally unasseptible.

But, joking aside. Why does everybody think Kelly is such a good guy all of a sudden, and believe that he can heroically step in and save theday? Just because he's a general?

Sorry, but I find everybody who voluntarily chose to be part of this administration highly suspect. General or no.

Edited August 11, 2017 by fraurosena
proofreading before hitting submit is a good thing

[GrumpyGran]

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Yeah, Jo-jo would find the tangerine toddler's behavior totally unasseptible.

But, joking aside. Why does everybody think Kelly is such a good guy all of a sudden, and believe that he can heroically step in and save theday? Just because he's a general?

Sorry, but I find everybody who voluntarily chose to be part of this administration highly suspect. General or no.

I know. Where's Rancid Penis when you need him? Sheesh, only two pages into this thread about him and he's already an epic fail. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed"

Spoiler

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — As the new White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly routes all calls to and from President Trump through the White House switchboard, where he can sign off on them. He stanches the flow of information reaching the president’s desk. And he requires that all staff members — including Trump’s relatives — go through him to reach the president.

But none of those attempts at discipline mattered this week. Instead, Kelly stood to the side as Trump upended his new chief of staff’s carefully scripted plans — pinballing through an impromptu and combative news conference in New York in which he inflamed another self-inflicted controversy by comparing the actions of white supremacist groups at a deadly rally in Charlottesville last weekend with the counterprotesters who came to oppose them.

The uproar — which has consumed not only the White House but the Republican Party — left Kelly deeply frustrated and dismayed just over two weeks into his job, said people familiar with his thinking. The episode also underscored the difficult challenges that even a four-star general faces in instilling a sense of order around Trump, whose first instinct when cornered is to lash out, even self-destructively.

By Wednesday, Trump, back at his New Jersey golf club, was further isolated and the White House was again under attack. Some aides and confidants privately described themselves as sickened and appalled, if not entirely surprised, by Trump’s off-the-cuff comments. And the president watched, furious, as a cascade of chief executives distanced themselves from him, prompting the dissolution of his major business advisory councils.

Kelly allies say the former homeland security secretary came into the West Wing job clear-eyed and practical, with the goal of implementing discipline on the staff and processes of the White House, not controlling the president.

“It’s clear Kelly is having a stabilizing and organizing influence on the White House,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), an informal Trump adviser. But, he added, “He will gradually have an impact on Trump but it won’t be immediate. There are parts of Trump that are almost impossible to manage.”

Another Republican operative and unofficial White House adviser was more definitive, saying that no matter how respected or talented Kelly may be, his first 2½ weeks on the job demonstrated an essential truth about the Trump White House: The president will act as he so pleases, even despite — and sometimes to spite — the efforts of his aides.

“The Kelly era was a bright, shining interlude between failed attempts to right the Trump presidency and it has now come to a close after a short but glorious run,” the operative said. “Like all people who work for the president, he has since experienced the limits of the president’s promises to cooperate in order to ensure the success of the enterprise.” 

This portrait of the White House under Kelly comes from interviews with 17 West Wing aides, informal advisers, Republican lawmakers and Trump confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a more candid assessment.

During Kelly’s short tenure, Trump has startled the world with his bellicose rhetoric on North Korea and attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), further imperiling his stalled legislative agenda.

Nonetheless, Kelly has largely improved staff morale, and implemented a rigor and order that has made West Wing aides feel both more optimistic and less mistrustful of one another, several White House aides said.

He has been empowered to shake up the staff, if necessary, although one confidant noted that all Kelly has done is restrict access to Trump. The chief of staff is reviewing everyone’s portfolio, and this friend noted that more West Wing consternation may occur when Kelly begins reallocating assignments.

Longtime Trump campaign associates have been left out of the loop and unable to build a rapport with Kelly. He has shown little interest in courting them or in seeking out their advice about how to improve the president’s standing. Phone calls go unreturned or handled in a friendly but curt fashion by his top aide, Kirstjen Nielsen, who came over with Kelly from the Homeland Security Department, they said.

On Wednesday, Hope Hicks, one of the president’s most loyal and trusted advisers, was elevated to the role of interim communications director — a role she has unofficially occupied for some time. 

In the week before Trump departed for an August vacation in Bedminister, N.J., the entire West Wing team began showing up at the 8 a.m. senior staff meetings. Even Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who rarely if ever appeared at staff meetings led by Reince Priebus, the previous chief of staff — began regularly attending. 

Kelly has transformed the West Wing from a political Grand Central Station — with aides and hangers-on cycling through the Oval Office — into an actual place of business. One outside adviser recalls stopping by the White House to say hello to his friends on days he had free time. Under Kelly, he said, approvingly, “If you’re coming, now it’s, ‘Why are you coming? Who are you coming to see? And why does the White House care about what you have to say?’ ”

Aides usually work through Nielsen, and she funnels information to Kelly, who decides what to show the president.

One key difference between Kelly and Priebus, two White House officials said, is that aides respect Kelly and think his efforts to control the information flow to Trump are about better serving the president — not self-preservation. 

Nonetheless, Trump has shown signs of chafing. Despite Kelly’s switchboard requirement, the president has used his personal cellphone to reach people. And one person close to Trump described him as a “caged animal” under Kelly, saying he is always going to respond negatively to attempts to corral him or keep him to a script.

The president was upset by the almost uniform backlash toward his initial statement Saturday about the violent rally in Charlottesville, in which he did not condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis by name, and decried violence from both sides. 

Although he did offer a broader scripted condemnation Monday, he reverted Tuesday to what aides and confidants say are his more authentic views, arguing that both sides were to blame for the violence. 

Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, who is Jewish, appeared with Trump at Tuesday’s news conference, standing behind the president in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York as he said that there were good people who protested alongside the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who organized the rally. Those close to Cohn described him as “disgusted” and “frantically unhappy,” although he did not threaten to resign. 

But Trump felt vindicated after the remarks, said people familiar with his thinking. He believes that his base agrees with his assertion that both sides are guilty of violence and that the nation risks sliding into a cauldron of political correctness. 

On Capitol Hill, Kelly’s evident lack of an ideological compass has drawn mixed reactions from Republicans who have dealt with him, said lawmakers and aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly.

Republican leaders appreciate Kelly’s light touch on strategy and planning for a busy September. Instead of dictating terms, he is listening to their mounting concerns about legislative expectations and assuring them that he will be a partner.

“He’s not an Alexander Haig giving orders,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), referring to the late four-star Army general who served as chief of staff under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. “He’s been very direct, to the point, making clear what the president’s position is. He’s firm and tough, but not heavy-handed. He’s seen as a totally responsible person.”

But some of Trump’s conservative allies said they wish Kelly would do more to force the Republican establishment to rally behind the president, and they worry that Kelly is following the model of Priebus by showing too much deference to congressional Republican leaders.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have talked about Kelly as a “black box” who is unreadable on policy, several people close to the group said. 

But within the West Wing, Kelly remains popular. Late last week in Bedminster, he gathered at Trump’s clubhouse restaurant for a relaxed, social dinner with the senior staff members. The group included Ivanka Trump, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hicks, Nielsen and others. The president also came by, staying for the full meal. 

As they reminisced about the campaign and told jokes, Kelly offered up a quip. “The best job I ever had was as a sergeant in the Marine Corps,” he said with a laugh, “and after one week on this job, I believe the best job I ever had is as a sergeant in the Marine Corps.”

I wonder how long he's going to last in this position.

[Childless]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed"

  Reveal hidden contents

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — As the new White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly routes all calls to and from President Trump through the White House switchboard, where he can sign off on them. He stanches the flow of information reaching the president’s desk. And he requires that all staff members — including Trump’s relatives — go through him to reach the president.

But none of those attempts at discipline mattered this week. Instead, Kelly stood to the side as Trump upended his new chief of staff’s carefully scripted plans — pinballing through an impromptu and combative news conference in New York in which he inflamed another self-inflicted controversy by comparing the actions of white supremacist groups at a deadly rally in Charlottesville last weekend with the counterprotesters who came to oppose them.

The uproar — which has consumed not only the White House but the Republican Party — left Kelly deeply frustrated and dismayed just over two weeks into his job, said people familiar with his thinking. The episode also underscored the difficult challenges that even a four-star general faces in instilling a sense of order around Trump, whose first instinct when cornered is to lash out, even self-destructively.

By Wednesday, Trump, back at his New Jersey golf club, was further isolated and the White House was again under attack. Some aides and confidants privately described themselves as sickened and appalled, if not entirely surprised, by Trump’s off-the-cuff comments. And the president watched, furious, as a cascade of chief executives distanced themselves from him, prompting the dissolution of his major business advisory councils.

Kelly allies say the former homeland security secretary came into the West Wing job clear-eyed and practical, with the goal of implementing discipline on the staff and processes of the White House, not controlling the president.

“It’s clear Kelly is having a stabilizing and organizing influence on the White House,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), an informal Trump adviser. But, he added, “He will gradually have an impact on Trump but it won’t be immediate. There are parts of Trump that are almost impossible to manage.”

Another Republican operative and unofficial White House adviser was more definitive, saying that no matter how respected or talented Kelly may be, his first 2½ weeks on the job demonstrated an essential truth about the Trump White House: The president will act as he so pleases, even despite — and sometimes to spite — the efforts of his aides.

“The Kelly era was a bright, shining interlude between failed attempts to right the Trump presidency and it has now come to a close after a short but glorious run,” the operative said. “Like all people who work for the president, he has since experienced the limits of the president’s promises to cooperate in order to ensure the success of the enterprise.” 

This portrait of the White House under Kelly comes from interviews with 17 West Wing aides, informal advisers, Republican lawmakers and Trump confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a more candid assessment.

During Kelly’s short tenure, Trump has startled the world with his bellicose rhetoric on North Korea and attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), further imperiling his stalled legislative agenda.

Nonetheless, Kelly has largely improved staff morale, and implemented a rigor and order that has made West Wing aides feel both more optimistic and less mistrustful of one another, several White House aides said.

He has been empowered to shake up the staff, if necessary, although one confidant noted that all Kelly has done is restrict access to Trump. The chief of staff is reviewing everyone’s portfolio, and this friend noted that more West Wing consternation may occur when Kelly begins reallocating assignments.

Longtime Trump campaign associates have been left out of the loop and unable to build a rapport with Kelly. He has shown little interest in courting them or in seeking out their advice about how to improve the president’s standing. Phone calls go unreturned or handled in a friendly but curt fashion by his top aide, Kirstjen Nielsen, who came over with Kelly from the Homeland Security Department, they said.

On Wednesday, Hope Hicks, one of the president’s most loyal and trusted advisers, was elevated to the role of interim communications director — a role she has unofficially occupied for some time. 

In the week before Trump departed for an August vacation in Bedminister, N.J., the entire West Wing team began showing up at the 8 a.m. senior staff meetings. Even Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who rarely if ever appeared at staff meetings led by Reince Priebus, the previous chief of staff — began regularly attending. 

Kelly has transformed the West Wing from a political Grand Central Station — with aides and hangers-on cycling through the Oval Office — into an actual place of business. One outside adviser recalls stopping by the White House to say hello to his friends on days he had free time. Under Kelly, he said, approvingly, “If you’re coming, now it’s, ‘Why are you coming? Who are you coming to see? And why does the White House care about what you have to say?’ ”

Aides usually work through Nielsen, and she funnels information to Kelly, who decides what to show the president.

One key difference between Kelly and Priebus, two White House officials said, is that aides respect Kelly and think his efforts to control the information flow to Trump are about better serving the president — not self-preservation. 

Nonetheless, Trump has shown signs of chafing. Despite Kelly’s switchboard requirement, the president has used his personal cellphone to reach people. And one person close to Trump described him as a “caged animal” under Kelly, saying he is always going to respond negatively to attempts to corral him or keep him to a script.

The president was upset by the almost uniform backlash toward his initial statement Saturday about the violent rally in Charlottesville, in which he did not condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis by name, and decried violence from both sides. 

Although he did offer a broader scripted condemnation Monday, he reverted Tuesday to what aides and confidants say are his more authentic views, arguing that both sides were to blame for the violence. 

Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, who is Jewish, appeared with Trump at Tuesday’s news conference, standing behind the president in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York as he said that there were good people who protested alongside the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who organized the rally. Those close to Cohn described him as “disgusted” and “frantically unhappy,” although he did not threaten to resign. 

But Trump felt vindicated after the remarks, said people familiar with his thinking. He believes that his base agrees with his assertion that both sides are guilty of violence and that the nation risks sliding into a cauldron of political correctness. 

On Capitol Hill, Kelly’s evident lack of an ideological compass has drawn mixed reactions from Republicans who have dealt with him, said lawmakers and aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly.

Republican leaders appreciate Kelly’s light touch on strategy and planning for a busy September. Instead of dictating terms, he is listening to their mounting concerns about legislative expectations and assuring them that he will be a partner.

“He’s not an Alexander Haig giving orders,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), referring to the late four-star Army general who served as chief of staff under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. “He’s been very direct, to the point, making clear what the president’s position is. He’s firm and tough, but not heavy-handed. He’s seen as a totally responsible person.”

But some of Trump’s conservative allies said they wish Kelly would do more to force the Republican establishment to rally behind the president, and they worry that Kelly is following the model of Priebus by showing too much deference to congressional Republican leaders.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have talked about Kelly as a “black box” who is unreadable on policy, several people close to the group said. 

But within the West Wing, Kelly remains popular. Late last week in Bedminster, he gathered at Trump’s clubhouse restaurant for a relaxed, social dinner with the senior staff members. The group included Ivanka Trump, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hicks, Nielsen and others. The president also came by, staying for the full meal. 

As they reminisced about the campaign and told jokes, Kelly offered up a quip. “The best job I ever had was as a sergeant in the Marine Corps,” he said with a laugh, “and after one week on this job, I believe the best job I ever had is as a sergeant in the Marine Corps.”

I wonder how long he's going to last in this position.

I don't personally know Trump.  I've never met the man in person and even I know how undisciplined he is.  Did Kelly just arrive here from outer space?  How could he have not known this?  Just look at Trump's job performance to date.  It's obvious. 

Edited August 17, 2017 by Childless

[GrumpyGran]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s lack of discipline leaves new chief of staff frustrated and dismayed"

  Hide contents

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — As the new White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly routes all calls to and from President Trump through the White House switchboard, where he can sign off on them. He stanches the flow of information reaching the president’s desk. And he requires that all staff members — including Trump’s relatives — go through him to reach the president.

But none of those attempts at discipline mattered this week. Instead, Kelly stood to the side as Trump upended his new chief of staff’s carefully scripted plans — pinballing through an impromptu and combative news conference in New York in which he inflamed another self-inflicted controversy by comparing the actions of white supremacist groups at a deadly rally in Charlottesville last weekend with the counterprotesters who came to oppose them.

The uproar — which has consumed not only the White House but the Republican Party — left Kelly deeply frustrated and dismayed just over two weeks into his job, said people familiar with his thinking. The episode also underscored the difficult challenges that even a four-star general faces in instilling a sense of order around Trump, whose first instinct when cornered is to lash out, even self-destructively.

By Wednesday, Trump, back at his New Jersey golf club, was further isolated and the White House was again under attack. Some aides and confidants privately described themselves as sickened and appalled, if not entirely surprised, by Trump’s off-the-cuff comments. And the president watched, furious, as a cascade of chief executives distanced themselves from him, prompting the dissolution of his major business advisory councils.

Kelly allies say the former homeland security secretary came into the West Wing job clear-eyed and practical, with the goal of implementing discipline on the staff and processes of the White House, not controlling the president.

“It’s clear Kelly is having a stabilizing and organizing influence on the White House,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), an informal Trump adviser. But, he added, “He will gradually have an impact on Trump but it won’t be immediate. There are parts of Trump that are almost impossible to manage.”

Another Republican operative and unofficial White House adviser was more definitive, saying that no matter how respected or talented Kelly may be, his first 2½ weeks on the job demonstrated an essential truth about the Trump White House: The president will act as he so pleases, even despite — and sometimes to spite — the efforts of his aides.

“The Kelly era was a bright, shining interlude between failed attempts to right the Trump presidency and it has now come to a close after a short but glorious run,” the operative said. “Like all people who work for the president, he has since experienced the limits of the president’s promises to cooperate in order to ensure the success of the enterprise.” 

This portrait of the White House under Kelly comes from interviews with 17 West Wing aides, informal advisers, Republican lawmakers and Trump confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a more candid assessment.

During Kelly’s short tenure, Trump has startled the world with his bellicose rhetoric on North Korea and attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), further imperiling his stalled legislative agenda.

Nonetheless, Kelly has largely improved staff morale, and implemented a rigor and order that has made West Wing aides feel both more optimistic and less mistrustful of one another, several White House aides said.

He has been empowered to shake up the staff, if necessary, although one confidant noted that all Kelly has done is restrict access to Trump. The chief of staff is reviewing everyone’s portfolio, and this friend noted that more West Wing consternation may occur when Kelly begins reallocating assignments.

Longtime Trump campaign associates have been left out of the loop and unable to build a rapport with Kelly. He has shown little interest in courting them or in seeking out their advice about how to improve the president’s standing. Phone calls go unreturned or handled in a friendly but curt fashion by his top aide, Kirstjen Nielsen, who came over with Kelly from the Homeland Security Department, they said.

On Wednesday, Hope Hicks, one of the president’s most loyal and trusted advisers, was elevated to the role of interim communications director — a role she has unofficially occupied for some time. 

In the week before Trump departed for an August vacation in Bedminister, N.J., the entire West Wing team began showing up at the 8 a.m. senior staff meetings. Even Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who rarely if ever appeared at staff meetings led by Reince Priebus, the previous chief of staff — began regularly attending. 

Kelly has transformed the West Wing from a political Grand Central Station — with aides and hangers-on cycling through the Oval Office — into an actual place of business. One outside adviser recalls stopping by the White House to say hello to his friends on days he had free time. Under Kelly, he said, approvingly, “If you’re coming, now it’s, ‘Why are you coming? Who are you coming to see? And why does the White House care about what you have to say?’ ”

Aides usually work through Nielsen, and she funnels information to Kelly, who decides what to show the president.

One key difference between Kelly and Priebus, two White House officials said, is that aides respect Kelly and think his efforts to control the information flow to Trump are about better serving the president — not self-preservation. 

Nonetheless, Trump has shown signs of chafing. Despite Kelly’s switchboard requirement, the president has used his personal cellphone to reach people. And one person close to Trump described him as a “caged animal” under Kelly, saying he is always going to respond negatively to attempts to corral him or keep him to a script.

The president was upset by the almost uniform backlash toward his initial statement Saturday about the violent rally in Charlottesville, in which he did not condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis by name, and decried violence from both sides. 

Although he did offer a broader scripted condemnation Monday, he reverted Tuesday to what aides and confidants say are his more authentic views, arguing that both sides were to blame for the violence. 

Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, who is Jewish, appeared with Trump at Tuesday’s news conference, standing behind the president in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York as he said that there were good people who protested alongside the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who organized the rally. Those close to Cohn described him as “disgusted” and “frantically unhappy,” although he did not threaten to resign. 

But Trump felt vindicated after the remarks, said people familiar with his thinking. He believes that his base agrees with his assertion that both sides are guilty of violence and that the nation risks sliding into a cauldron of political correctness. 

On Capitol Hill, Kelly’s evident lack of an ideological compass has drawn mixed reactions from Republicans who have dealt with him, said lawmakers and aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly.

Republican leaders appreciate Kelly’s light touch on strategy and planning for a busy September. Instead of dictating terms, he is listening to their mounting concerns about legislative expectations and assuring them that he will be a partner.

“He’s not an Alexander Haig giving orders,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), referring to the late four-star Army general who served as chief of staff under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. “He’s been very direct, to the point, making clear what the president’s position is. He’s firm and tough, but not heavy-handed. He’s seen as a totally responsible person.”

But some of Trump’s conservative allies said they wish Kelly would do more to force the Republican establishment to rally behind the president, and they worry that Kelly is following the model of Priebus by showing too much deference to congressional Republican leaders.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have talked about Kelly as a “black box” who is unreadable on policy, several people close to the group said. 

But within the West Wing, Kelly remains popular. Late last week in Bedminster, he gathered at Trump’s clubhouse restaurant for a relaxed, social dinner with the senior staff members. The group included Ivanka Trump, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hicks, Nielsen and others. The president also came by, staying for the full meal. 

As they reminisced about the campaign and told jokes, Kelly offered up a quip. “The best job I ever had was as a sergeant in the Marine Corps,” he said with a laugh, “and after one week on this job, I believe the best job I ever had is as a sergeant in the Marine Corps.”

I wonder how long he's going to last in this position.

LR but very interesting, thanks as always. Having read it I think he may last longer than I thought. But ultimately he's up against a brick wall. Another one walking a very thin line. Oh, and Hopster AKA Dark, I wonder if Kelly was grumbling about what exactly she was doing so we had to give her a real job. Is she Dump's real security blanket and everyone close quickly learns that? No Hope=war with everyone? I'm just going to leave that as Hopster cause it makes me laugh.

And @Childless, as a high-ranking military man, he would believe that he could change the situation. They are trained to believe that they can overcome all odds and they do believe it. They have to have that mentality to lead the troups. Maybe he wasn't the best choice for this job.

[GreyhoundFan]

@GrumpyGran -- as a high-ranking military man, he would also be used to people following his direction. He's probably never dealt with someone as bad as the TT. I think he might actually be a good choice for managing this sham administration, aside from the 900 pound orange gorilla, who is unmanageable. What he really needs to do with the TT is this:

[Zola]

May be nit-picky, but it absolutely disgusts me to no end that pretty pretty princess Ivanka is attending WH senior staff meetings.

What the hell? Why? Was she elected to govt at some point, and I totally missed it? Is she somehow qualified to hold the position she enjoys, other than by birth to a man who is morally, ethically corrupt? No. In any other administration, she'd be shut out. She has no business being part of those meetings. 

I want stronger, stricter nepotism laws. Laws that will actually be enforced.

[candygirl200413]

It pissed me of then when she was allowed to be his "advisor" as well as when they "sworn her in" for the summit. But I read that she is his main advisor cause of his cognitive decline.

[GreyhoundFan]

"New White House Chief of Staff Has an Enforcer"

Spoiler

Lost in the scramble to cope with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the response to North Korea’s nuclear provocations and the shock at President Trump’s instant alliance with Democrats was a little-noticed bureaucratic earthquake that shook the White House this week.

At a staff meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, announced a number of seemingly quotidian internal moves, capped by the appointment of Kirstjen Nielsen — his brusque, no-nonsense longtime aide — as an assistant to the president and his principal deputy.

Few outside the White House marked the moment, but inside the building, this was a big deal. Mr. Kelly had just handed day-to-day operations to a forceful, empowered aide some of her new colleagues are already comparing to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the feared Vatican enforcer who eventually became Pope Benedict XVI.

Perhaps the biggest problem Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, faces in taming his meandering, leaky, infighting-plagued West Wing staff is getting them used to the idea of functioning more or less the way previous White Houses have.

Call it the old normal.

Whether Mr. Kelly succeeds or fails will be a function of his tolerance for Mr. Trump’s mercurial management style and willingness to tolerate military discipline, as well as Mr. Kelly’s skill in winnowing, wooing and harnessing his own staff. Ms. Nielson, as he made clear this week, will be a central part of his attempt to right the president’s foundering administration.

In Mr. Trump’s White House, the old normal passes for a revolution, and Mr. Kelly’s enemies are seething as well as plotting and griping to sympathetic members of the news media. That is the picture described by eight current and former administration officials who requested anonymity.

In contrast to previous White Houses, the first seven-plus months under Mr. Trump have been something of a historical outlier — organized around an antiestablishment president contemptuous of precedent and comfortable with spaghetti lines of authority and the resulting chaos.

And the first step in taming 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Kelly believes, is installing a No. 2 who is willing to be hated.

It is Ms. Nielson who sends out the emails announcing internal policy and planning meetings that now contain a clipped addendum — “principals only” — with a stern warning that any subordinates who wander in will be immediately ejected.

She is also responsible for keeping Mr. Kelly’s no-fly list of aides he deems to be unfit to attend serious meetings, the most prominent of whom is Omarosa Manigault, the former “Apprentice” star with an ill-defined job and a penchant for dropping into meetings where she was not invited.

Throughout the White House, the circle of decision-making is shrinking, leaving staff members accustomed to wandering in and out of meetings — and the Oval Office — in a sour mood. And the feelings are not confined by the gates of the executive compound. Outside Trump advisers, accustomed to getting their calls briskly returned, are complaining that their phones have gone silent since Mr. Kelly took over six weeks ago.

The president’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, made only a cursory study of the structure and history of the West Wing, much to the disgust of a half-dozen Obama administration officials who offered to coach him but were, for the most part, politely rebuffed.

But perhaps his biggest problem was that he was a fund-raiser by trade and schmoozer by temperament with very little knowledge, or interest, in policy and the inner workings of government. Mechanics who never lift the hood tend to lose their jobs. Mr. Trump, who attracts subordinates who flatter rather than challenge, also seemed to take special delight in humiliating him, often ignoring his advice and referring to him by the diminutive nickname “Reincey.”

Ms. Nielsen’s role is similar to the one that Katie Walsh, a longtime deputy, assumed for Mr. Priebus when he first joined the White House — gatekeeper to the gatekeeper. And, as has happened with Ms. Nielsen, some members of the White House have chafed at a woman asserting power — and made her a target for the anger that they cannot express at the chief of staff.

But there is a critical difference, people close to Mr. Kelly said. When Ms. Walsh came under attack, Mr. Priebus did little to protect her, and she left after only a few months. Mr. Kelly’s experience in the military, by contrast, has led him to the conclusion that it is hard to survive a successful attack on a top subordinate without being weakened.

Still, people close to Ms. Nielsen, who was a homeland security official in George W. Bush’s administration, have counseled her to lighten up and to pay more attention to the perfunctory niceties of a not-so-nice job.

Slowly and methodically, Mr. Kelly is replacing the bomb-throwing reality-TV types Mr. Trump feels most comfortable around with competent professionals capable of stabilizing the West Wing. So far, it has been addition by subtraction.

In his first few days on the job, he approved the firing of two far-right National Security Council staff members who were undermining Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, then targeted Sebastian Gorka, a blustery nationalist. But his main objective from the start, people close to the situation said, was to force out Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and internal provocateur.

At Wednesday’s staff meeting, Mr. Kelly also announced other significant moves, most temporary:

A longtime House aide, Johnny DeStefano, will head the Office of Public Liaison while a search is conducted for a permanent director.

Joseph Hagin, a deputy chief of staff with decades of White House experience, will oversee the president’s schedule, a crucial role in any White House.

Rick Dearborn, a deputy chief of staff who worked for Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he was a senator from Alabama, is not one of Mr. Kelly’s favorites, several officials said, and is being shifted to a less high-profile role. Mr. Kelly is also reviewing the role of Bill Stepien, the White House political director, who has done little to help Mr. Trump improve his standing, in Mr. Kelly’s view.

Mr. Kelly has also greatly empowered Rob Porter, the White House Staff secretary — a Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar — to rationalize the administration’s tangled policy making/policy-making process.

During Mr. Trump’s transition, the two Trump associates most attentive to history and structure were the two men most quickly shut out of administration jobs by rivals: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who drew up a proposed West Wing organizational chart — complete with potential hires — based on presidential history and his own experience in Trenton. And Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, who carefully studied the painstaking work of the White House historian Martha Joynt Kumar, in part to help Mr. Trump figure out which positions were available to loyalists who toiled on his campaign.

Mr. Kelly has not had the time to make that kind of study, though he was intuitively attracted to the more controlled approach of his predecessor’s predecessor, Denis R. McDonough, President Barack Obama’s last chief of staff, who modeled his chain of command on that of the National Security Council.

But Mr. Kelly is not rebuilding the organization in a vacuum, and Mr. Trump’s mood can have as much an effect as Mr. Kelly’s methodical approach.

The new chief of staff has tried to shield Gary D. Cohn, the chairman of the National Economic Council, from Mr. Trump’s continuing wrath since the former Goldman Sachs executive went public with his disgust at the president’s response to the deadly violence last month in Charlottesville, Va.

Mr. Kelly made a point, one staff member said, of throwing his arm around Mr. Cohn in solidarity, in full view of the news media, as they exited Marine One last week on the South Lawn.

But he has not always been successful. Several aides said Mr. Trump is freezing out Mr. Cohn by employing a familiar tactic: refusing to make eye contact with Mr. Cohn when his adviser greets him.

At a meeting on Thursday on infrastructure at the White House with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and members of Congress from New York and New Jersey, Mr. Kelly told participants that Mr. Cohn would lead the meeting. But Mr. Trump, whose most cutting insult is to pretend someone does not exist or that he barely knows them, virtually ignored him.

It's interesting because it's true, in this role, you have to have a deputy is isn't afraid to say no.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Perhaps the biggest problem Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, faces in taming his meandering, leaky, infighting-plagued West Wing staff is getting them used to the idea of functioning more or less the way previous White Houses have.

Ha! Yeah, the biggest problem I have with my chimpanzees is their SAT scores. They keep getting zeros! Don't understand it. 

[Howl]

Hoping there is success in bringing the White House to order.  Before Kelly arrived, the WH was a high school run by  big-ego Mean Girls, and I include Bannon and Gorka in that category.  Big changes, so there's a LOT of pouting going on right now. 

Trump cannot be brought to heel, but having the machinery of the WH running in an orderly way means that at least some of the more egregious crap that was whispered into Trump's ears is not getting to him now.  This is key, because of Trump's reactive nature.  

I'll do a little happy dance when Stephen Miller gets shown the door. 

I wonder if Kelly may sense that he can get some of this by Trump if he is somehow perceived (by Trump) as making Trump's life easier and more convenient, because who knew presidenting would be SO GOSH DARN HARD! 

[GrumpyGran]

I think his next big target is Omarosa. How hard will Dumpy fight that? She's a token for him but also a big fluffer. I wonder if Kelly is worried about being perceived as racist if he tries to boot her?

And this latest request from Mueller may help boost some others out. I can see Kelly trying to convince Dumpy that people who have to talk to Mueller may end up telling tales so best to wave bye-bye to them. Look out, Hopester, you may have to go out and get a real job.