Four reasons Kelly won’t last as Trump’s chief of staff
Let’s get straight to our “EPIC FAIL PREVIEW!” Reason one: Kelly and Trump have – well, divergent views on former FBI director James Comey.
When Donald Trump abruptly fired James Comey on May 9, Gen. John Kelly—then head of the Department of Homeland Security—called the ousted FBI Director and expressed a desire to resign in solidarity, CNN reports.
According to CNN, Kelly took particular issue with the way Comey learned of his firing. As the New York Times reported in May, the former FBI director was made aware of his termination as he addressed a group of FBI intelligence employees, through televisions screens that were tuned to cable news. Meanwhile, Trump’s bodyguard and longtime aide Keith Schiller dropped off a manilla envelope containing Comey’s dismissal letter to the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.
Reason two: what good is stopping internal leaks when external forces keep making Team Trump look increasingly incompetent? They just got punk’d by a British internet troll.
A self-described “email prankster” in the UK fooled a number of White House officials into thinking he was other officials, including an episode where he convinced the White House official tasked with cyber security that he was Jared Kushner and received that official’s private email address unsolicited.
“Tom, we are arranging a bit of a soirée towards the end of August,” the fake Jared Kushner on an Outlook account wrote to the official White House email account of Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert. “It would be great if you could make it, I promise food of at least comparible (sic) quality to that which we ate in Iraq. Should be a great evening.”
Bossert wrote back: “Thanks, Jared. With a promise like that, I can’t refuse. Also, if you ever need it, my personal email is” (redacted).
Bossert did not respond to CNN’s request for comment; the email prankster said he was surprised Bossert responded given his expertise. The emails were shared with CNN by the email prankster.White House officials acknowledged the incidents and said they were taking the matter seriously. “We take all cyber related issues very seriously and are looking into these incidents further,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN.
Reason three: there is no solid management technique that can work with a team whose top members admit that they are all completely out of their depth.
Donald Trump’s election team could not have colluded with Russia because they were barely talking to each other, according to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top White House advisor.
“They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” Kushner told congressional interns during a private talk at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington on Monday afternoon.
Kushner’s meeting with the interns had been rescheduled from two weeks ago, shortly after which he had to appear before Congress to give testimony about the Russia investigation.
A source provided a copy of written notes on Kushner’s talk and question-and-answer session to Foreign Policy.
For investigators attempting to determine whether Trump’s associates knowingly worked with Russia to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a defense claiming chaos and confusion might be the key difference between criminal behavior and incompetence.
And incompetence is a strong reason to invoke the 25th amendment.
But we digress.
Let’s get back to that final reason Kelly is unlikely to stay on that long: he won’t want to be tainted by a team of liars.
Late yesterday, WaPo published that big scoop concerning Trump having ‘dictated’ Donald Trump Jr’s outright lie concerning that June 2016 meeting with Russians about dirt on Hillary and help from the Putin regime. Trump is going to have about as much success personally managing this crisis as he had with Trump Steaks!
This morning, Kelly finds himself with a growing lie tsunami as one of Trump Sr’s high-profile lawyers, dominionism-loving Jay Sekulow, has also been caught in a lie in a statement concerning the WaPo story!
Sekulow doesn’t deny any specific aspect of the Post’s reporting, but says, “Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.”
One thing that is newly pertinent, however, is an interview Sekulow did on the July 16 edition of Meet the Press. During it, Sekulow categorically denied that Trump was involved in the drafting of Trump Jr’s misleading statement.
“The president did not draft the response,” Sekulow said. “The response came from Donald Trump Jr., I’m sure in consultation with his lawyer… I do want to be clear the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement.”
“I do want to be clear the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement” — Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, apparently lying pic.twitter.com/DMukqu6uIU
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 1, 2017
As Scooby-Doo would say, “Ruh-roh!” If Sekulow knew the denial came from Trump, that’s the kind of conduct that could get him disbarred!
So we wish John Kelly the best of luck in trying to manage the circus of cretins and crooks that is the Trump White House and Casino®.
We’re giving him three months before he quits, turns state’s evidence, or both. Meanwhile, we’ve stocked up on popcorn…
