How is this for a profile in political leadership from John Kelly, the White House chief of staff?
…Kelly’s status in the White House has changed in recent months, and he and the president are now seen as barely tolerating one another. According to four people close to Kelly, the former Marine general has largely yielded his role as the enforcer in the West Wing as his relationship with Trump has soured. While Kelly himself once believed he stood between Trump and chaos, he has told at least one person close to him that he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment — at least this chapter of American history would come to a close.
What kind of person continues on in his or her job beyond the point at which they’ve given up on being effective or preventing an historic disaster? Who doesn’t seek to exfiltrate themselves for a situation in which high crimes and misdemeanors are being committed in their field of responsibility? How do we view a chief of staff who gives up on leading either his boss or his staff and then just sits there occupying space, making apologies out of one side of his mouth and leaking excuses out of the other?
And this is too generous to Kelly, because he’s been a hardliner on immigration and discouraged the president from making any kind of deal with Congress. If the administration is now committing a crime against humanity at the border, Kelly owns every part of that policy, and all the more every day that he remains in his position. He just sits there like a bump on a log while the president praises the character of Kim Jong-Un, says Russia properly owns Crimea, and lobbies to have sanctions lifted against Russia and the country returned to the G7.
Now he sounds like he’s eager for his whole administration to be frogmarched out of the West Wing because it will end the nightmare we’re all living through. Does he think he’ll escape the Tuff-tie hand restraints?
I don’t know how to define this behavior because cowardice doesn’t seem to quite cover it.
Actually, I think you’re wrong on this one, Booman. John Kelly IS a coward about this. Not a physical coward afraid of being hurt, but a moral coward afraid of having to explain why a presumably “honorable” person
John Kelly is not now and never was a physical coward. We now have evidence, however, that the only thing between him being an honorable Marine and him being Hermann Goering was the continuous presence of other Marines.
Kitchens once made the comment that the calm assurance of Christians that it is only the Bible that keeps them from being kill crazy psycopaths was the scariest part of being an atheist. Its kinda the same thing.
shhhhhhhhhhhhh
don’t tell anyone!
Hitchens, Kitchens, it all a tempest in Bertrand Russell’s teapot!
Kelly is a piece of shit. If you don’t believe me then you should read up on the history of Gitmo these past 15 or so years.
Yes, words fail to describe the kind of cowardice that Kelly exhibits. He has lied on almost as many levels as Trump with his actions and inactions.
He doesn’t deserve an inch of compassion and like so many before and around him, Trump has brought out the worst in him. He’s been no white knight, he’s been no master at bringing order to the Office, he has only enabled.
That he doesn’t walk out the door is self delusion, nothing more.
I suspect that all the VIP accoutrements connected with the position has as much to do with it as anything else.
These people are venal.
He allows families to be torn apart and treated this way, I’d say he is a coward. Resign John and save your soul from these Nazi bastards.
Where are the girls? Remember when the terrorist took the girls in Africa?
One wonders how many of the infants will end up sold to adopters desperate for a healthy sorta-white baby.
I think staying allows him the luxury of not having to be answerable within the public realm for the absolute clusterfuck that he has enabled, encouraged, and helped shepherd since he took the COS position.
He is in a position much like Colonel Nathan Jessup, in the movie “A Few Good Men”. And if you are familiar with the movie, you know that Colonel Jessup, in the face of his own promotion and sanction of illegality which resulted in the death of innocents, chose his exit on his own terms, rather than face the consequences of his actions.
. . . view Jessup as the hero of that movie (not least, I’m sure, for givin’ it to that preppy libtard Cruise’s character — they just eat that shit up!). They’ll quote that climactic (“You need me on that wall!”) speech reverently, with adoration.
Yeah, I’ve long thought that film — and particularly the “who’s the hero?” divide — to be a very reliable Rorshach(sp?) test. That both Cruise and his character are unlikable enough to boost the Jessup-as-hero option probably helps explain the lasting popularity of the film.
Might be overstatement to say that tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about them. But it tells you a lot.
Rorschach test,indeed. When I have talked to right wingers about this movie, it’s like we’ve seen two totally different films. It is kind of spooky to see confirmation bias in such a raw way. We come at this from polar opposite frames of reference.
I look forward to reading the NYT column he writes from his UC Berkley office across campus from John Yoo.
All too likely
Maybe he’ll take Ferguson’s old spot at Stanford
As you note he’s a hardliner on immigration. Wasn’t he one of the first to articulate the separation policy?
Many of them seem to have some sort of personality disorder. Only way I can explain some of the behavior.
Yes, back in March of 2017.
He seems acutely aware of the position he’s now in, too.
From the author of the piece:
I agree with DerFarm. He knew what he was doing when he accepted the DHS position in the first place. And when he went on to become C of S.
So we are here again?
Why oh why do people want to work for Trump? Why, it’s a complete mystery!
Because, to their core, everyone of them hates anybody that does not have their skin color, and it has been their secret life long dream to kick those darker groups right smack in the face.
They are racists! Trump’s only domestic policy goals revolve around racism, right on through voter purges and all the way to the Trumpism foundation of removing every last mark of the preceding BLACK president.
Kelly stays, and will stay, because he hates Obama, hates POC, and wants to see a boot on their faces….forever.
.
You beat me to it. Agree 110%. This is about Kelly being a nasty Nazi White Supremacist, who wants to f*ck over anyone who has even marginally darker skin tones than his. If he can f*ck over the poor, in the process, so much the better.
Maybe Kelly’s relationship with Trump has “soured.” So what?
Kelly’s getting to do and/or witness everything he’s ever wanted to do TO this country. He’s as disgusting of a shithole as his shitholed boss.
Just like Every. Single. Other. Person. Who. Works. For. Trump.
All of them, Katie. All equally morally reprehensible.
No big secret. They’re not using dog whistles now.
Exactly!
Once you start putting kids in cages, in warehouses, and then quote the Bible….well, if you stay it’s because it’s what you want to happen.
Why oh why did Nielsen stay after Trump was soooo mean to her?
Because she was waiting, as she has waited ever since that black waiter was uppity to her when she was going to the University of Virginia, to lock them all up.
For some in the administration it started as hating Muslims, for some Mexicans, for some blacks, but then they got hired, and the Miller’s of the administration explained that they all had dark skin, so now they hate them all.
No election, no impeachment, no resignation will fix this. This is a main character facet of 40 million people in this country. We are fucked.
.
That single true statement followed by an unrelenting pack of lies in his speech slandering Congresswoman Frederica Wilson — compounded by the dripping, deplorable’s condescension with which it was delivered and by his refusal to retract or apologize when video surfaced definitively demonstrating that it was in fact a pack of slanderous lies (gosh, whom does that remind me of?) should have told everyone everything they’d ever need to know about Kelly’s “honor” (meaning, total lack thereof).
Also, the current child-hostage-concentration-camps policy is just the logical extension of the policies Kelly began as DHS Sec.
So at least one plausible hypothesis for why Kelly tolerates the extreme humiliation of staying on with his testicles safely ensconced in Trump’s nightstand draw may be that Kelly’s a TruBe* for those policies . . . i.e., he really is that evil . . . and wants to see them through despite the emasculation and humiliation.
They’re all Banana Republicans, after all.
*”True Believer”
. . . Trump’s nightstand drawer . . . “, duh.
Power and Greed is the motivation for that keeps Kelly in the WH.
Trump’s great talent is bringing out the worst in people. He brings out the worst in his employees. He brought out the worst in the American electorate. The man’s a freakin’ genius at corrupting and degrading the human soul.
Some folks are sane enough to resist Trump’s spell. Kelly ain’t one. I think we’ll find he’s one of the biggest suckers.
Why does he stay? To me, it’s human nature. Trump keeps his staff competing with each other… fiercely, savagely, like their life depends on it. Also, Trump is ALL about zero-sum games. Cooperation is a foreign concept. In Trump world, you don’t cooperate with coworkers: you beat the hell out of them (on one or more levels) before they beat the hell out of you.
That’s the dynamic around Trump. Always. It’s intense, contagious, engaging — a matter of life and death like the battlefield. You buy into that dynamic or you’re a loser who gets no respect. Kelly has had his ups and downs. For a while, he was top dog. Now he’s not, but he’s still hooked. He can’t fucking stand the thought of his enemies winning. At the moment, all he can do is irritate them by his presence, but he’s secretly hoping to rise. He’s secretly hoping the lord and master will come to his senses and shine his light on him again.
It’s all pathological. He hates Trump, but remembers how great it was to bask in his narcissistic glow. Maybe it’ll happen again, maybe it won’t. But at least if he sticks around he can prevent a competitor from taking his place. It would kill him to quit and read that Jarvanka had taken the helm. Or Lewandowski.
Now that I’ve written all this I realize: Trump hooks people’s egos and doesn’t let go without smashing them. You can’t quit without being humiliated. Kelly is way too vain and narcissistic to handle that. Better to be miserable, than a loser forevermore.
Immigration: I don’t Kelly has the slightest pang of conscience. “If people don’t want to lose their kids, they shouldn’t cross the border.” He believes it’s that simple. God knows who he’s competing against on the immigration front, but he’s got a dog in that fight. That dog once won. It’d be total ego devastation to walk away and let another dog win.
. . . Think he’s all-in on the evil, a TruBe (and that’s the most plausible explanation for why he stays, i.e., to see deplorable evil through to “fruition”).
I am thinking of people who have resisted Trump’s spell. People who should have known better.
Reince Preibus? Nopes!
HR McMaster? Nopes!
Ronny Jackson? Nopes!
Ben Carson? Nopes!
Nikki Haley? Nopes!
Alex Azar? Nopes!
I’m not sure I’d list Ben Carson as sane.
We can speculate about what’s in another person’s heart, but it’s meaningless. However it seems self evident that anyone who casts his lot with Trump lacks personal integrity. Even someone who puts a good gloss on it by claiming through a series of leaks that he’s just there to protect the country. If Kelly were serious about the well being of our country, he would resign and denounce this administration. Perhaps, as with so many, power (or at least its trappings) is enticing.
My sense of Kelly has always been that he’s a man of supreme, bored arrogance — the fate of mere people or governments are dimly relevant to him, but pale in comparison to the magisterial ideas he sees himself as embodying. He wants to sit there being correct about everything, and if it means being sidelined or ignored, so be it…he’ll just suffer. (Like Nixon, if he contemplates going to jail he’ll compare himself to Gandhi.)
In other words, another delusional narcissist. Maybe Trump will suck all of them in the country in and the singularlity created will cause them all to disappear in a horrible, malignant black hole.
I suspect he’s staying on just to screw Trump. They clearly hate each other now, but Trump lacks the guts to fire him. Given the way he’s talking, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he remains in place to facilitate Trump’s self-destruction. He probably feels that he is exercising a form of negative power, in the sense that a new COS with more “influence” over Trump might curb his worst impulses. If Kelly remains, there’s no “pilot” at all, and Trump is more likely to run the ship aground so that he never gets off the rocks.
This seems the clear message from Kelly’s reported statement “that he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment — at least this chapter of American history would come to a close.”
I suspect that Kelly loathes Trump that much, and want’s to see him founder and drown while Kelly calls out to him, “Fuck you Trump.” You did it to yourself. After all, Trump has already utterly ruined Kelly’s own reputation, but bringing out his worst impulses.
A pox on both of them.
Maybe he just wants the chance to repeat the phrase “I’m in charge here”, hoping it will go better this time.
This is government supported child abuse and government supported human trafficking. Trump is keeping the girls for himself and his Miss USA Pageant. Trump is a scumbag, especially when it comes to women.
Will someone please explain what the GOP game plan is with the whole detention camp thing? I mean … it was a proactive choice to cause this firestorm and they seem to be licking their chops as they double and triple and quadruple down on it with all the womp womp. I mean … it’s a strategic move but what’s the strategy? Just to take attention away from Mueller for a while? Cuz that doesn’t make sense. It could actually relieve the public’s short-attention span Russia fatigue by taking it out of the news, so when it comes back it’ll be fresher. I mean … what’s happening is what Bannon, Miller and Trump want – clearly – but why? We’ve been fooled over and over – from Mexican rapists to Judge Curiel to grab ’em by the p***y. This is another example of that same pattern.
Truly Satanic.
From the top on down.
We need an exorcism.
It will come…
Let us pray that it comes in time.
AG