As Gen Kelly leaves this WH, he is giving a LOT of interviews, and reporters are straightening out some facts.
Kelly is interviewed by LA Times, NYT and Washington Post (written early Dec) I am highlighting some from each.
LAT
Kelly rejects reports that Trump bristled at the endless briefings and Kelly’s tight-fisted control of access to the Oval Office.
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The stalemate also highlights the distance, at least in language, between Kelly and Trump over the president’s signature promise — to build a wall.
“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Kelly said.
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Kelly faulted the administration for failing to follow procedure and failing to anticipate the public outrage for the two most controversial initiatives of his tenure: Trump’s travel ban in January 2017, and the “zero tolerance” immigration policy and family separations this year.
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When Trump blamed “both sides” for the violence, Kelly seemed to hang his head in disapproval. But later he defended Confederate memorials and suggested the Civil War was not caused by slavery but inability to compromise.
In early 2018, Kelly conceded he’d mishandled the removal of Rob Porter, then-White House staff secretary, after reports emerged that two ex-wives had accused Porter of abuse.
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Asked why he stayed 18 months in the White House, despite policy differences, personality clashes, the punishing schedule, and a likely lasting association with some of Trump’s controversies, he said simply: duty.
“Military people,” he said, “don’t walk away.”
NYT
Mr. Kelly has clashed with Mr. Trump over the nature of the wall before. When Mr. Kelly said earlier this year on Fox News that Mr. Trump’s views on a border wall were not “fully informed” and had “evolved,” the president was enraged and berated him.
“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter a short time later.
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But Mr. Kelly said the president never ordered him to do anything against the law, and that he would have quit if that had happened.
WAPO
But the departure of Kelly — a four-star general with battlefield experience and deep government know-how — deprives the West Wing of a seasoned leader who was seen by allies as a check on some of the president’s most reckless impulses.
@evanperez (CNN)
Evan Pérez Retweeted Maggie Haberman
It’s remarkable that Kelly now admits the chaos of travel ban implementation, thanks to Stephen Miller & Co, when he previously lied to the public and press. The reporting, it turns out, was spot on. Kelly was lying.
@maggieNYT
The current theme out of some in the WH comms shop is “there’s no chaos to see in this White House,” a narrative Trump has hoped will replace the actual reporting. This Kelly interview affirms most of the real-time reporting about how it is there.
written Dec 9, 2018