President Trump announced on Saturday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was leaving. The two men had very different styles
President Donald Trump is losing his chief of staff, John Kelly, after a difficult — some say failed — 16-month stint to try and bring order to a chaotic West Wing.
“He’ll not be remembered as a great chief of staff and maybe not even a good one simply because he failed to control the administration’s worst impulses,” said Mike Carpenter, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense until early last year. “So those are now his worst policies. He’s associated with them for better or worse.”
Trump made the announcement on the South Lawn of the White House before departing Saturday for the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. He said he would announce a replacement soon.
“John Kelly will be leaving — I don’t know if I can say ‘retiring,’” Trump said. “But he’s a great guy. John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year.”
Trump frequently referred to Kelly as one of “my generals” and recruited the retired four-star Marine Corps general to the White House in July 2017 after serving as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly quickly became a star for Trump, who showered Kelly with praise for his work to help reduce immigration to the lowest levels in years.
His charge was to bring order to a West Wing that was besieged with chaos and disorder. Many staffers expressed relief about his appointment and welcomed his calls to install military order. He was preceeded by former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
On his first day in the White House, Kelly fired Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director hired only 11 days before, after he made vulgar criticism against other members of the president’s staff, including Priebus, and Stephen K.
