Day 710: Outgoing chief of staff Kelly trashes Trump as he exits

Donald Trump’s outgoing chief of staff, John Kelly, is spilling the beans about what is constantly going on behind the scenes at the White House.

Kelly noted that a lot of Trump’s rhetoric is known to be garbage behind the scenes, like Trump’s repeated insistence of calling any barrier on the southern border a “wall.”

The concrete border wall that President Trump has repeatedly called for as a signature campaign promise is not actually a wall and has not been since “early on in the administration,” the outgoing White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, said in an interview published on Sunday.

“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Mr. Kelly told The Los Angeles Times.

He also admitted, euphemistically, that Trump frequently pushed up against what was legal in his role as president.

At many times Kelly appeared to hate his job as he was belittled and had his opinions cast aside. Perhaps using aides to tell his side of his 17-month tenure to try and rehabilitate his image, or maybe independently sourced by The New York Times, people that worked in the White House reported that Kelly frequently said that Trump couldn’t handle the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being president.

Mr. Kelly was known to tell aides that he had the “worst job in the world,” and frequently told people that Mr. Trump was not up to role of president, two former administration officials said.

Of course Kelly is, in part, trying to deflect some of the blame from himself — as he leaves the White House with Trump’s stink permanently on him — noting a lot of what he did couldn’t be seen.

But in his Los Angeles Times interview, Mr. Kelly suggested his tenure should be judged on the actions that Mr. Trump did not engage in, as opposed to the ones he did. Mr. Kelly has been credited by supporters with slowing or stopping the president from a number of his impulses, such as pulling out of NATO.

But for all the self-serving that his interview accomplishes, Kelly is still peeling back the onion of just how underprepared Trump was for his current role and how little he cares about improving his knowledge base or temperament as he’s focused entirely on political victories.

710 days in, 752 to go

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