Trump later told others that he thought Kelly and Crane were going to get into a fistfight.
Kelly urged the president to select Kirstjen Nielsen, a 45-year-old lawyer who had been Kelly’s Department of Homeland Security deputy, as the new secretary.
“Kirstjen is the only person who can do this,” Kelly argued to the president. “She knows DHS, she was my chief of staff, she’s terrific at all this stuff.”
The nomination was sent to the Senate on October 11.
The president saw that Fox News commentator Ann Coulter called Nielsen “an open borders zealot” who opposed Trump’s border wall. Lou Dobbs piled on, saying Nielsen was pro-amnesty, not a true believer, not an immigration hard-liner, and served in the George W. Bush administration. At her confirmation hearing she had said, “There is no need for a wall from sea to shining sea,” and Dobbs, a strong Trump supporter, called this comment “outrageous.”
“Everybody’s saying that she’s terrible,” Trump said later to Kelly in the Oval Office. “It’s a joke. She’s a Bushie. Everybody hates her. How could you have possibly made me do this?”
“She’s the best,” Kelly said. “She’s the best of the best. I can personally vouch for her. She’s the first woman to lead the department. I know she’s a good person. She’s going to do a great job. She will be very effective. She is on your team. She was my right-hand person when I was there. She knows the department.”
“That’s all bullshit,” Trump said. “She’s terrible. You’re the only one that thinks she’s any good. Maybe we’ll have to withdraw her nomination.”
Kelly threw up his hands. “Maybe I’m just going to have to resign.” And he stormed out.
Porter later took Nielsen’s commission for Trump to sign that would officially make her secretary.
“I don’t know if I really want to sign this right now,” Trump said. “I’m just not sure about her.”
“She’s been confirmed,” Porter said. The Senate had approved her nomination 62 to 37. “You’re going to attend her swearing-in.”
Trump signed.
* * *
Kelly appeared on Fox News’s Bret Baier show and said that Trump had gone through “an evolutionary process” and “changed his attitude toward the DACA issue and even the wall.”
At the White House, Trump went through the roof.
“Did you see what Kelly said?” he asked Porter. “I evolved? I’ve changed on this? Who the fuck does he think he is? I haven’t changed one bit. I’m exactly where I was. We’re going to build the wall. We’re going to build it across the entire border.”
* * *
Zach Fuentes, Kelly’s assistant, warned the senior staff in the West Wing that Kelly had a short attention span and was easily distracted.
“He’s not a detail guy,” said Fuentes, who had also been Kelly’s assistant at Homeland Security. “Never put more than one page in front of him. Even if he’ll glance at it, he’s not going to read the whole thing. Make sure you underline or put in bold the main points.” However there were some subjects, particularly about the military, Fuentes said, that would engage Kelly’s full attention and he might want to have a long conversation.
Normally, Fuentes said, “you’ll have 30 seconds to talk to him. If you haven’t grabbed his attention, he won’t focus.”
* * *
Kelly held regular senior staff meetings of the 20 top people from the White House every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Roosevelt Room. He frequently reviewed his conversations with the president.
“I talked with the president over the weekend,” Kelly recounted at one meeting. “He’s really hot on getting us out of the Korean Peninsula altogether. Forcing the South Koreans to pay for THAAD. I’ve just been going back and forth with him, and I’ve really laid into him and told him he couldn’t do this.”
As Kelly himself got caught in the Washington political crossfire and was criticized in the media, he spoke more and more about the press and his own role at the senior staff meetings.
“I’m the only thing protecting the president from the press,” Kelly said at one meeting. “The press is out to get him. They want to destroy him. And I’m determined to stand in the way, taking the bullets and taking the arrows. Everyone’s out to get us.
“The press hates him. They hate us. They’re never going to give us a break on anything. It’s active hostilities. And so that’s why we’re taking all this incoming. They’re also turning on me because I’m the one guy standing in front of the president trying to protect him.”
In a small group meeting in his office one day, Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.
“I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
* * *
Kelly began to have less control, less involvement. Trump called members of Congress when Kelly wasn’t around. He called Chuck Schumer, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or cabinet members, underscoring that he was his own chief of staff and his own legislative affairs director.
“Madeleine,” he would call out, “get Speaker Ryan on the phone.”
Trump’s questions started. “How’s Kelly doing?” he asked Porter. “He’s tough but it kind of seems like he’s too tough. I don’t know that the staff really likes him that much.”
“I think he’s helped,” Porter answered. “Better to be feared than loved. But he’s got his limitations. I think he just needs to recognize them. And you do too.” Porter said he thought Kelly’s weakness was on legislative matters. “You really need a good political affairs director because that’s not Kelly’s background. And if you want your chief of staff to be your chief political adviser, it shouldn’t be Kelly.”
* * *
Tillerson complained to Kelly many times about Porter getting Trump to sign decision memos without a sign-off from the secretary of state.
“I know you’ve been trying to loop Rex in,” Kelly told Porter, “but now you cannot take a decision memo to the president—you can’t brief the president on something like that—unless you have explicit sign-off.” Kelly made clear that feedback from State in general or from Tillerson’s chief of staff would not be sufficient. No decisions, Kelly instructed, “until you’ve talked or emailed with Rex specifically.”
Trump heard about the conflicts. He liked aggressive disagreements. They smoked out a wide variety of opinions. Harmony could lead to groupthink. He embraced the chaos and churn beneath him.
* * *
At about 9 p.m., Monday, November 27, more than four months after Priebus left the White House, the president reached him on his cell phone. They talked for 10 minutes.
What about the upcoming Senate race in Alabama? Trump asked. How was the ocean cruise that Priebus had just been on? Trump said it was amazing how much they got done together in the first six months. What about tax reform? And the Republican senators who were holding out on tax reform? Trump said that the stories The New York Times had that week were nuts.
How do you think Rex is doing? Trump asked. You think he gets it?
Priebus was careful. He thought Tillerson should have been great, but he was hard with the president. And the president didn’t like hard.
But the call was not heavy, as if Trump wanted someone to shoot the shit with. Kelly was all business. Kelly would not sit and BS.
The president invited Priebus to lunch at the White House for Tuesday, December 19. Now as a private attorney his proximity to the president and his well-publicized meetings were useful with his private clients. The world knew Priebus was still a player for sure. However, the president’s questions about Tillerson reminded Priebus of all the times he learned that Trump had sounded out others about him: How do you think Reince is doing?