John Kelly Wants You to Know There’s No Turmoil in the Trump White House

I can’t help but think White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is a broken man.

He’s been burdened for almost a year now with the thankless job of being the Trump wrangler. In that time, he’s had mixed results. For example, leaks from the White House, while they haven’t been ended, have at the least, been slowed to a drip.

That’s John Kelly.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen that image of a crestfallen Kelly, off in the background, while Trump rails away, saying something his staffers know will be a late night punchline for weeks on end.

At some point, Kelly, a retired United States Marine Corps general, may have just stopped trying to swim against the current of Trumpism, and allowed himself to be swept along, because little hints of Trumpism seem to be seeping in.

There have actually been a lot of rumors, regarding whether Kelly will stick it out as chief of staff, or if he’ll soon find the pressure too much to bear and bolts.

One recent report from NBC News stated that Kelly sees himself as the buffer, or bulwark between an out-of-control Trump and the rest of the nation.

In that same report, it was suggested that Kelly has called Trump an “idiot” – something he denies.

So, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

NPR featured an interview with Kelly on Thursday, so let’s examine some of his thoughts.

First of all, he wants us to know he and the president are close, and that sometimes the president takes his advice. Sometimes he doesn’t.

I’d like to know if there’s a specific number value to that “sometimes.”

Also, he believes that had he been chief of staff from the first day of the Trump administration, a lot of the things that went down, a lot of the turmoil could have been prevented.

“In retrospect, I wish I had been here from Day 1,” Kelly told NPR. “I think in some cases in terms of staffing or serving the president that first six months was pretty chaotic and there were people some people hired that maybe shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not that things were a disaster that first six months, but I believe they could have been better,” he added. It was clear from his “perch” as secretary of Homeland Security, he said, “that the White House was less organized than our president deserved.”

Things were a disaster that first six months.

And I don’t know what he was seeing from his perch as Homeland Security secretary, but the reason the early Trump White House was so unorganized was because Trump, a reality TV star, pitted his staff against each other, for his own amusement. He surrounded himself with sycophants and clingers, all battling for influence and position.

It hasn’t helped that nepotism drew in a son-in-law with money troubles to act as a senior adviser. There were bound to be conflicts of interest.

Jared Kushner has been unable to successfully complete the necessary documents to gain full security clearance.

After multiple attempts, he always seems to forget some pesky business dealing with a foreign player, or some behind-the-scenes meeting with somebody who might be considered a security risk.

Then there are the reports of the Kushner family using Jared’s access to the president as a chip in negotiations with foreign investors.

It was Kelly who bounced Jared from his high security perch, down from “Top Secret” clearance, to simply “Secret.”

But all is well, according to Kelly.

When asked about the Russia probe, and if it is, indeed, a “witch hunt,” Kelly responded:

Something that has gone on this long without any real meat on the bone, it suggests to me that there is nothing there, relative to our president.

Relative to our president…

No, just the people he’s surrounded himself with, given the multiple indictments. Whether this sweeps Trump up or not, if there’s even a whiff of corruption, we need it weeded out.

He also mentioned that the ongoing probe is “embarrassing” to Trump.

It should be embarrassing. It wasn’t meant to build up his ego, but the more he rages against it, given what we already know, the worse he looks.

One remark from the interview that is getting a lot of attention was Kelly’s thoughts on a new, zero tolerance policy at the border. It calls for separating families at the border and prosecuting them.

Let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the people that move illegally into the United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13. … But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing. … They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. … The big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.

So is that true? Is the rush of illegal immigrants attempting to breach our borders an uneducated, backwards mass of future drains on the welfare system, unable to fit into American society?

I can say for a fact that there are plenty of natural born Americans who don’t fit in with any polite society. They’ve been raised to be takers, entitled and disrespectful, and we will likely have far more to worry about with our own breed of career welfare recipients in the near future, than an influx of illegals.

Was that harsh?

I apologize, but sometimes you have to be blunt.

And with all that said, John Kelly wasn’t wrong, here. The law is the law. Quoting Ronald Reagan, a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.

My heart goes out to all those who just want a better life, when they can’t get it in their homeland. There are, however, correct and honorable ways to go about it. How can someone be trusted to be a valued citizen of this nation if they show a lack of respect for our laws, from the start?

We’re a nation of immigrants. Immigrants built us, it’s true. Those immigrants believed in the dream of America, however. We need immigrants with that same spirit, and there are many who still have that. Those are the ones going through the proper channels, doing everything by the book, in order to be made citizens. LAWFULLY.

Time will tell if all the rumors of discord between Trump and his chief of staff are true.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised by anything you hear.

This is the age of Trump. There’s nothing so outrageous that it couldn’t apply to what’s going on in Washington, right now.