Kelly denies calling Trump an ‘idiot,’ says news report is ‘pathetic attempt to smear people’
by Josh Dawsey April 30 at 5:40 PM Email the author
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Monday denied he said President Trump is an “idiot,” calling an NBC News story that said he had done so “total BS.”
Kelly’s statement came about 45 minutes after NBC News published a report that described a number of fights between Trump and his embattled chief of staff. The outlet reported that Kelly often tells senior aides that they have to save the president from himself and his impulses — and that Trump does not understand policy.
“He doesn’t even understand what DACA is. He’s an idiot,” Kelly told White House aides, according NBC News, which cites two White House officials present for the meeting. DACA refers to a program that protects from deportation young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
“I spend more time with the President than anyone else and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand and he and I both know this story is total BS,” Kelly said in a statement released by the White House press office in response to the story. “I am committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes.”
"Kelly thinks he's saving U.S. from disaster, calls Trump 'idiot,' say White House staffers"
The president, who demands the loyalty of his aides, is increasingly disenchanted with his homeland security chief.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and ELIANA JOHNSON
05/11/2018 04:28 PM EDT
Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen is the latest senior administration official to bear the brunt of the president’s obsession with keeping “never Trump” Republicans out of his administration. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s frustration with Kirstjen Nielsen, which boiled over Wednesday in a Cabinet meeting tirade, has been growing for weeks — stoked by associates who have privately made the case that she’s a closeted “never Trumper” who still doesn’t fully back his agenda.
Trump’s advisers have been increasingly criticizing the Homeland Security chief in private conversations with the president, arguing that she isn’t doing enough to improve border security and noting that she wasn’t a vocal Trump supporter during the campaign, three people familiar with the internal discussions told POLITICO.
As a result, Trump has come to believe that Nielsen — who considered quitting this week after the president berated her over an uptick in migrant arrests — is not focused enough on carrying out his immigration agenda, one of the people said. The president has told friends that he believes chief of staff John Kelly, with whom he has a strained relationship, foisted his deputy Nielsen upon him, according to two of the people, complaining that he didn’t know what he was getting.
[to the end]
“The department is crumbling, and she is actively being undermined by Trump appointees, and career folks simply do not like her,” said one former Bush administration official who worked with Nielsen, who added: “No one on the outside has any sympathy for her. She treated people the same way she’s being treated.”
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