Leaky, Leaky

Boo hoo, Generaly Kelly.

President Trump was in an especially ornery mood after staff members gently suggested he refrain from injecting politics into day-to-day issues of governing after last month’s raucous rally in Arizona, and he responded by lashing out at the most senior aide in his presence.

It happened to be his new chief of staff, John F. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly, the former Marine general brought in five weeks ago as the successor to Reince Priebus, reacted calmly, but he later told other White House staff members that he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country. In the future, he said, he would not abide such treatment, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

  NYT

I bet that's what they all say. He'll have to quit if he doesn't want to put up with it.

What is different this time is that Mr. Trump, mired in self-destructive controversies and record-low approval ratings, needs Mr. Kelly more than Mr. Kelly needs him. Unlike many of the men and women eager to work for Mr. Trump over the years, the new chief of staff signed on reluctantly, more out of a sense of duty than a need for affirmation, personal enrichment or fame.

[...]

But these days it is Mr. Kelly’s state of mind, not Mr. Trump’s, that concerns the beleaguered aides buoyed by the new chief’s imposition of structure and clear lines of authority.

[...]

Long-serving advisers and friends remember when Mr. Trump also embraced the tighter controls imposed by Paul Manafort when he was brought on as the campaign chairman in the middle of 2016. Then they saw Mr. Trump quickly turn on him.

Which may have put a nail in his presidential coffin.

The president, for his part, has marveled at the installation of management controls that would have been considered routine in any other White House.

“I now have time to think,” a surprised Mr. Trump has told one of his senior aides repeatedly over the last few weeks.

Which may put another nail in that coffin.

Mr. Kelly cannot stop Mr. Trump from binge-watching Fox News, which aides describe as the president’s primary source of information gathering. But Mr. Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.

Now Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.

[...]

Even Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who has unfettered access to her father, has made a point of giving Mr. Kelly a heads-up if she is going to talk to the president about policy or politics, according to one of Ms. Trump’s friends.

[...]

But how long Mr. Kelly and the president, two men with such divergent approaches to the common goal of Mr. Trump’s success, will be able to coexist is unclear.

And will remain so until the moment he leaves.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.