When Kelly took on the position of CoS, he wisely said he wasn’t going to attempt to change Trump, who after all is his boss, but was instead focusing on controlling the WH staff. He forced Bannon, Ivanka, and Jared to go through him when scheduling time with the POTUS. And…they agreed.
But of course the real problem isn’t an undisciplined staff; it’s an infantile POTUS. This is how Kelly will fail. If he enforces even the smallest bit of discipline on Trump, Trump will resent it. Maybe not at first, but eventually he’ll want to “show” Kelly who’s boss. He won’t do that by direct confrontation. He’ll do it by backstabbing him. He’ll go around Kelly and encourage others to go around Kelly. Eventually, Kelly will find himself on the outside looking in, with everyone just ignoring his directives and perhaps snickering at his inability to control them.
Once Kelly’s in that position, he becomes a handy scapegoat. Every WH problem at that point is potentially “because of Kelly” – and many will be blamed on him. That’s how Kelly gets wraithed.
He’s fostered infighting and chaos in his company for decades. No outside factor like a new chief of staff will change something that runs so deep in the person at the top, and it was naive for pundits to think it could.
welcome to the new normal. No big deal that our President, who has the entire military might of the United States at his disposal, needs a handler to keep him from saying crazy shit 24 hours a day. Are they trying to wean him off of FOX and Friends also? I am an atheist, but if I wasn’t I would be praying daily for something to help us survive this period in our history and come out somehow smarter and stronger on the other side. And I keep trying to figure out how my generation (I’m 65) produced the overwhelming insanity that has gripped this country for the last 20 years.
Oh, that makes sense. It seems like he could cruise the dining room and solicit opinions on what he should do about N. Korea. He could share some intelligence with random diners. He could proclaim the horribleness of the press from the podium. He could demand an impromptu spectacle to entertain him - maybe the wait staff could break out a song and dance number on how glorious he is.
I swear when you see those images of him pretending to drive a truck or a fire engine you could imagine him coloring in his coloring books on a rainy day like this.
Ugh. Think I’ll back away from the screen now and do something constructive myself lest I become the thing I hate.
Thank you a thousand times for this. Sitting here in California, I had no idea what might be keeping him from frolicking in a golf cart on this fine, sunny day. Now that I know he’s stuck indoors with the TV on I know what to expect and can just leave the internet to the rest of you and continue painting the spare bedroom.
Just as well. Last thing we need is for Kelly to put lipstick on this pig. Let the pig be a pig, on a platter, for the whole world to see…
Eventually, tweet by juvenile, emotionally unstable, pathologically dishonest tweet, he’ll alienate everyone. Except his truely brain dead followers. Who are not NEARLY as plentiful as the idiot would desperately like us to believe they are.
You are certainly welcome. It’s no big deal to remark that it’s raining but if it makes the world and Presidential tweets a bit more comprehensible, well, these days that’s a help.
