Previously, the White House claimed Kelly would stay on through 2020. In an interview with me in October, the president said, “I’m very happy with General Kelly and I get along very well with him.” He claimed he wasn’t looking for a replacement for Kelly.
One person who advises the president and recently spoke to him about the chief of staff told me yesterday that the claim Kelly would stay through 2020 was mostly a favor to Kelly:
“That announcement allowed him to kind of save face and leave on his own terms,” this person said.
“That announcement allowed him to kind of save face and leave on his own terms,” this person said.
There have been stories about Kelly’s imminent demise since virtually the moment he joined the WH staff.
So the question is, why now? I think there are two main reasons:
So the question is, why now? I think there are two main reasons:
The first is obvious by now: Even though his catchphrase is “You’re fired,” Trump does not like to fire people. He thrives on the drama of uncertainty. And he is highly susceptible to distraction, meaning dissatisfaction with staff may erupt only to fall away for weeks at a time.
And then there’s the reality of the difficulty of his campaign for reeelection setting in. 2 WH staffers, Bill Stepien & Justin Clark, departed their posts this week to join the campaign. The person I spoke to yesterday said Trump‘s started thinking about 2020 for the first time.
A central criticism of Kelly was always that he didn’t have the political skills - or interest in acquiring the skills - to help Trump navigate the tricky terrain on the hill. Someone once described him to me as having the political acumen of their grandmother.
Looking ahead to 2020 with Mueller hanging over him, few accomplishments to campaign on, and a Democratic House prepared to check his power and stall his agenda, it’s easy to see why he’d want to make a change now, or why he’d pick now to justify a decision he’d already made.
This has been the case for Nick Ayers, an operator who seems more capable of the kind of maneuvering that Kelly has no apparent patience for. As the person I spoke to yesterday put it: “Sometimes you need a hammer and sometimes you need a screwdriver. John Kelly’s a hammer.”
That said, I have lately started to hear that the president dislikes that Ayers is considered Kelly’s likely replacement/that Ayers has gotten a little over his skis.
This has happened before, of course: the president talks about something or someone so much and to such a vast universe of advisers formal and informal, internal and external, and that’s reflected in the press, which irritates him.
All of this is to say that nothing is certain to happen in Donald Trump’s White House until it happens and even after it happens, something might fuck it up anyway.
