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After his arraignment in a Miami courthouse this week, Donald Trump tried to celebrate the developments, headlining a weird event with supporters at one of his golf clubs. As a Washington Post report put it, the former president’s approach “highlighted Trump’s instinct to face down federal charges with the same bluster he marshaled against previous threats to his business and candidacy, and to project strength for his supporters, constructing an alternate reality where he is not in deepening legal jeopardy.”
But one of his former top aides isn’t buying. From the article:
“He’s scared s---less,” said John Kelly, his former chief of staff. “This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, ‘I’m not going to pay you; take me to court.’ He’s never been held accountable before.”
It's oddly satisfying to watch Kelly throw caution to the wind and express his visceral contempt for his former boss.
Revisiting our coverage from last fall, after leading the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, the retired Marine general served as Trump’s White House chief of staff for 17 months. The Republican had four chiefs of staff in four years, but none served longer than Kelly.
Once he had parted ways with the then-president, Kelly had little to say about his former boss and place of employment — that is, at least at first.
As regular readers may recall, his reticence did not last. The more radical Trump became, the more willing Kelly became to condemn his former boss, accusing Trump of, among other things, “poisoning” people’s minds. Kelly later said publicly that Trump has “serious character issues” and is not “a real man.”
Late last year, the former White House chief of staff went considerably further, telling The New York Times — on the record — that Trump “repeatedly” told him that he wanted to use the IRS to target his perceived political foes. The Times’ account added that Kelly described Trump’s demands as “part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him.”
The Times’ report went on to note, “Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted.” The then-president made the demands anyway.
When it comes to those who’ve been in Trump’s orbit, few people, if any, have a better sense than Kelly of how Trump operates, how he processes information, how he learns, and how he makes decisions. With this in mind, it’s remarkable to see just how much the former White House chief of staff, even now, seems utterly disgusted with the former president.
This post revises our related earlier coverage.