Breaking: Trump Says Chief of Staff John Kelly Is Leaving

The two men have reportedly stopped speaking in recent days.

Mother Jones illustration

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump has said that John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, will leave the post by the end of the year, according to reporters from AP and Reuters. Though Trump asked Kelly earlier this year to keep the position for two more years, the two men have reportedly stopped speaking in recent days.

The relationship between Trump and Kelly has been fraught from the start, with the president frequently taking issue with Kelly’s efforts to run a more disciplined White House in the face of Trump’s preference for conflict among staff members. But Kelly’s harder edge management style never kept him from attracting his own drama within the White House. Instead, his tenure was marked by high profile, near-constant conflicts with staff members and administration officials. Some of his recent clashes reportedly involved the office of the First Lady and National Security Adviser John Bolton, with whom he engaged in a profanity-fueled shouting match in October over immigration.

Many expected Kelly to leave amid his botched handling of the February scandal involving Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary, who resigned amid domestic abuse allegations. (Kelly later claimed he never considered resigning from the fallout.) In April, shortly after Porter’s departure, Kelly was forced to deny a report that he had called Trump “an idiot.” 

Kelly’s exit will continue a long string of high profile Trump administration departures. Despite reports of dysfunction, Trump has repeatedly insisted that there is no discord among his aides, but only “great energy.”

Image credit: Ron Sachs/ZUMA; Starmax/Newscom/ZUMA

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate