John Kelly Exceeds His Station
Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when John Kelly became Trump’s chief of staff—at last, we thought, someone who could contain Trump’s most egregious outbursts, throttle down volatility in the White House, and act as gatekeeper, in particular minimizing the casual comings and goings of members of the quasi-Royal Family in and out of the Oval Office.
Kelly has managed to limit access to the President, but has largely failed in containing Trump’s emotional outbursts on Twitter and suppressing volatility in the White House. But, perhaps in frustration from his own ineffectiveness, Kelly overstepped his station when he got into a feud with Representative Frederica Wilson over the notorious phone call the President made to a Gold Star family. Actually, I understood Kelly’s point about Wilson’s grandstanding, even though he made a factual error (a natural symptom of the misinformation disease caught by anyone who associates with Trump).