The author runs the Intercept podcast, Deconstructed.
Miriam
John Kelly Was a Bully, Bigot, and Liar for Trump. Goodbye and Good
Riddance.
By Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
09 December 18
Goodbye, John Kelly.
The president's chief of staff is heading for the White House exit. "John
Kelly will be leaving," Donald Trump confirmed to reporters on Saturday. "I
don't know if I can say 'retiring,' but he's a great guy."
This "great guy" will leave behind an administration mired in scandal, chaos
and corruption; a president perhaps even more reckless and lawless today
than he was when Kelly arrived for work at the West Wing on the morning of
July 31, 2017.
That was a period in which political pundits and correspondents also
believed the retired four-star general to be a "great guy." Remember how his
appointment, as replacement for the hapless Republican operative Reince
Preibus, was greeted by the liberal press? Kelly, we were told, would be the
"adult in the room"; he would rein in a brash and belligerent
commander-in-chief.
The New York Times called the former Marine commander a "beacon of
discipline" who would be "unafraid to challenge" the president. The
Washington Post said he would "bring some plain-spoken discipline to an
often chaotic West Wing." Axios listed him as a key member of the "Committee
to Save America." Then there was my favorite headline, from Bloomberg News,
on August 6, 2017: "New Chief of Staff Kelly Moves Quickly to Tame Trump's
Tweets." (How did that work out?)
It was all a bunch of nonsense from lazy reporters and commentators who
should have known better. Kelly, lest we forget, arrived at the White House
from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where he had quickly and
proudly built a reputation "as one of the most aggressive enforcers of
immigration law in recent American history," to quote from a scathing
evaluation of his six-month tenure in charge of DHS by the New Yorker's
Jonathan Blitzer. On Kelly's watch, wrote Blitzer, "immigration arrests in
the U.S. increased by forty per cent and DHS became one of the few branches
of the federal government that has been both willing and able to execute
Trump's policy priorities."
In March 2017, while defending Trump's 'Muslim ban', Kelly had threatened to
walk out of a meeting with Arab-American and Latino groups in Michigan. In
April 2017, in a speech in Washington D.C., the DHS Secretary had told
members of Congress to either change the country's immigration laws or "shut
up and support the men and women on the front lines." In May 2017, at a
Coast Guard ceremony, the retired general was caught on a hot mic telling
Trump, who was holding a ceremonial sword, that he should "use that on the
press, sir."
***
So why did anyone with functioning eyes or ears assume he would do anything
different at the White House? Why did political and media elites pretend he
would be a sober and moderate figure, a check or restraint on the president,
rather than Trump's nasty and brutish mini-me?
How else are we supposed to describe his gaffe-laden, controversy-filled 17
months in charge? This was a chief of staff who told Fox News that "the lack
of the ability to compromise led to the Civil War," while praising the
pro-slavery Confederate general Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man"; who
protected and promoted White House staff secretary Rob Porter - a man
accused of domestic abuse by both of his ex-wives - and described him as a
man of "true integrity and honor, and I can't say enough good things about
him"; who repeatedly misled the press about what he knew about Porter and
when he knew it, which led to one of his White House colleagues calling him
a "big fat liar"; who claimed the "vast majority" of undocumented immigrants
"don't integrate well" and "don't have skills"; who described immigrants who
were eligible for DACA but had failed to apply for it as "too lazy to get
off their asses"; who said he wanted to reduce the number of refugees
admitted into the United States to "between zero and one"; who defended the
separation of migrant children from their parents on the grounds that the
kids would be "put into foster care or whatever" and bragged that the "big
name of the game is deterrence"; who signed a "Cabinet order" authorizing
the (potentially illegal) use of lethal force by troops at the border; who
lamented that women were no longer treated as "sacred and looked upon with
great honor" but who was also accused of suggesting women were more
emotional than men; who breached security protocols by firing White House
aide Omarosa Manigault in the Situation Room and threatening her in the
process; who boasted to Manigault on a secret recording that everyone in the
White House "works for me and not the president"; who made a series of false
accusations against black member of Congress, Frederica Wilson, and then
swore he would "never apologize" for lying about her; and who shamelessly
allowed Trump to use his dead son to attack former President Barack Obama.
Yes, he was quoted calling the president "an idiot" multiple times,
according to NBC News; yes, he was quoted by journalist Bob Woodward
describing the Trump White House as "Crazytown"; yes, he publicly undermined
the president by suggesting Trump had "evolved" on the issue of a border
wall (spoiler alert: Trump hadn't). So, yes, not unsurprisingly, all of this
annoyed and upset Kelly's thin-skinned master in the Oval Office, who - with
the encouragement of his daughter - finally gave the retired general the
big heave-ho over the weekend.
But let's be clear: Kelly was never a "great guy"; never the "adult in the
room." He was a bully, a bigot and a liar; as racist and reactionary as his
soon-to-be former boss. He was an enabler of Trump's worst crimes and abuses
- from the "unconstitutional" appointment of his crony Matthew Whitaker as
acting attorney general, to the abduction of children at the U.S.-Mexico
border, to the fake furor over the migrant "caravan."
The truth is that this once-distinguished military man should never have
been appointed to the top political job in the White House - and deserves to
have been fired from it long ago.
So goodbye, John Kelly. And good riddance.
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