On his way to the Army-Navy football game today, POTUS said that John Kelly will be leaving his position as Chief of Staff at the end of the year.
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who was assigned to bring a level of discipline to President Donald Trump’s often chaotic administration, is leaving the post after months of internal tensions frequently spilled into public view, Trump said Saturday.
“John Kelly will be leaving toward the end of the year,” the president told reporters as he left the White House for the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.
Trump, who called Kelly “a great guy” despite their clashes of recent months, said he will announce a successor – perhaps an interim one – in a few days.
The president was careful not to describe Kelly’s exit as a firing, saying that “John Kelly will be leaving – I don’t know if I can say ‘retiring.’” He thanked the former Marine general for his long years of public service.
It was rumored that he was on the way out for awhile. It’s probably not a bad move to get some fresh blood in this position. I would say that getting a new person to run Homeland Security and the Defense Department are more pressing issues though.
The problem is that Trump doesn’t have enough people to fill these positions who are fully on board with the populist brand of politics that got him elected. He also does not seem to have any sort of real control over the deep state bureaucracy that is the federal government.
Outside of declaring a martial law, it’s hard to say what Trump can substantively do at this point. These personnel changes are almost like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Maybe things will improve once the special counsel witch hunt is out of the picture but I’m not all that optimistic.
