Noah Bierman offers Los Angeles Times readers interesting observations about the Trump administration’s chief of staff.
In the roughly three months since President Trump chose John F. Kelly as his second chief of staff, observers have puzzled over the retired Marine general’s occasional scowls and downcast gazes, wondering whether he and Trump, with such different styles and backgrounds, perhaps weren’t working well together.
Kelly, the military man trained to respect sharp lines of authority and tradition, uses terms like “information flow” to describe the discipline he tries to bring to a chaotic White House. Trump, the impulsive businessman and reality-show veteran, delights in flouting authority and upending norms of the presidency.
But Kelly’s extraordinary remarks on Thursday from the White House briefing room, in which he segued from defending Trump to speak of loss — both his own, of a son, and the country’s, of old civilities, all while attacking a Florida congresswoman — offered a glimpse of what the two men seem to share. Both hearken to an undefined time in America when some things were “sacred,” as Kelly put it, to a better moment that’s been lost.
In sharing his nostalgia, Kelly did not sound like the more rough-spoken Trump. But he sounded an awful lot like many of the voters who put Trump into office.
