Is John Kelly's White House Honeymoon Period Already Over?

By Emma Stefansky, Vanity Fair

03 September 17

Trump is not the kind of president who likes to be managed.

t this point, any position within Donald Trump’s administration is subject to change. Since former Marine general John Kelly joined the White House to replace Reince Priebus as chief of staff in late July, everything has seemed to be going, at least by Trump standards, unusually well. Yes, there was the “very fine people on both sides“ moment, with Kelly memorably hanging his head in frustration. But it’s been a less chaotic period by all accounts, and Trump has even taken a few opportunities to give Kelly compliments on Twitter.

That may be coming to end, as it’s becoming more and more clear, according to a new report from The New York Times, that a rift is growing between Trump and Kelly, for the same reasons rifts developed between the president and all the other former members of his staff: Kelly’s just doing his job, which is managing Trump, which is essentially impossible..

A number of sources from inside the administration reported tension between the president and Kelly to the Times, evidenced by a few incidents like last month’s rally in Arizona, where Trump was visibly irritated by Kelly’s insistence that the president keep talk of politics during the rally to a minimum. He reportedly lashed out at Kelly, and the Times reports that Kelly later told a few aides that he had never been spoken to like that in his career, and he would not tolerate such behavior again.

“It is inevitable that a guy who will not be contained and does not want to be handled or managed was going to rebel against the latest manager who wanted to control him,” Trump adviser Roger Stone said of the situation. By several accounts Kelly was hired on to clean things up and make the administration run more efficiently—which he has succeeded in doing. Under Kelly’s management, Trump “now has time to think,” as he’s said repeatedly to one of his senior aides who spoke to the times. And in his quest to remove any bumps in the road to efficiency, the Chief of Staff was a supporter of the removals of Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Anthony Scaramucci.

But as soon as Kelly tries to manage the president, by controlling the flow of information to his desk or the constant stream of visitors, Trump has been inclined to fight back. Though the Times reports that Kelly has given no indication that he plans to leave his position soon, it’s unclear how long the two may be able to co-exist. And with other staffing musical chairs still happening, Kelly may simply be the final proof that there is no true taming the chaos endemic to the Trump White House.