![Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly / [Image credit: The White House/Flickr]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2017/12/11/660x290/b_502x220x82/chief-of-staff-gen-john-kelly-image-credit-the-white-houseflickr_1743443.jpg "Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly / [Image credit: The White House/Flickr]")
Ever since Gen. John Kelly publicly attacked the representative of a Gold Star family in October, the White House Chief Of Staff seems to have fallen out of favor with many American people who initially felt he was supposed to be a check on Donald Trump's volatile presidency.
Diagnosing and influencing Trump's impulse to tweet
An article in the New York Times published in early December reported that Gen. Kelly spends, on average, 14-hour days trying to instill discipline in the White House. When Kelly first began in August, much of the controversy over the Trump presidency centered on the President's compulsive tweeting which was considered to be a public relations nightmare.
This was especially the case as President Trump has often used his social media account to troll world leaders and even instigate what many believe could be a nuclear war between the US and North Korea.
Even when Kelly began in his role as White House chief of staff, it was admitted at the time that he was not going to rein in the President from using Twitter as it wasn't entirely under his control. But, reporting on those events suggested that Kelly would try in other ways by keeping the President busy with other duties and perhaps even influence him from taking to Twitter. The recent NYTimes article further confirmed the Chief of Staff's approach in saying that Kelly has been trying to "quietly and respectfully" reduce the amount of free time that the President has for social media.
An undisciplined president
The Times reported that the President is said to be up at 5:30 in the morning already watching news programs (which tends to trigger those fiery tweets). In relation to Gen. Kelly, the new Chief of Staff is compared to former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and that he was tasked with getting the President to arrive at the office by 9:30 AM but was not always successful.
If anything, Kelly has now increased the pace of meetings that President Trump holds with his staff.
Unlike Priebus, the President apparently tends to seek the approval of Kelly when he has questions about his schedule or wants the General's advice on policy. Prior to Kelly's mentioned public condemnation of Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), the view was that because of Kelly's military record and being a retired four-star general, that those qualities would be enough to keep the President restrained.
But the Chief of Staff's statements against Rep. Wilson showed the President that he could without a doubt, rely on the General to side with him against his opposition.
As it stands with Kelly
Being that the President instigates daily conflicts with the Press, the Times article says that even Kelly has adopted some of the President's favorite grievances. For instance, it points out that Kelly agrees with the President that some reporters are interested in taking down the administration. Thanks to Gen. Kelly's attacks on Rep. Wilson, we now know what Kelly's grievances look like. After Kelly had made public statements against Wilson, various major media outlets further established that Kelly was, in fact, wrong about the events around the Miami Democrat's call from the President.
As part of Kelly's attack on Rep. Wilson, he claimed that Frederica had listened in on the private call from the President to the Gold Star widow and then made it public when she said that Trump was insensitive to the family's loss. The truth was that the call was on speaker and Wilson, as the family's representative, was sitting next to the widow of the fallen soldier, La David Johnson. He went even further by smearing Rep. Wilson, recalling a speech she made that he was present at, where he claimed that she was taking credit for funding the FBI building in Miami. Video footage of the speech refutes this and it caused 17 female members of the Congressional Black Caucus to demand an apology.
When White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was later confronted with this evidence, she defended Kelly's statement and said that it was inappropriate to criticise the four-star general, who also happens to be a Gold Star father.
Here is a segment of the Daily Show that breaks down the reasons for why Rep. Wilson deserves an apology, one that has either still not happened or was made privately without it being reported. In any case, much like Donald Trump never apologizes, John Kelly is unlikely to do so.
