Trump 'needs to understand that 18 and 19-year-old people are going to die': White House chief of staff John Kelly had to 'overwhelm' president with information to stop him from acting impulsively
- Two weeks after Trump threatened North Korea with "fire and fury," then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly privately said the president did not fully grasp the implication of his messages, according to ABC chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl's new book.
- "He needs to understand that 18 and 19-year-old people are going to die," Kelly reportedly said. "This is big-boy and big-girl s--t. You have to understand people will die because of these decisions."
- In order to lessen Trump's impulsivity, Kelly developed a system to "overwhelm him with facts" - to counter the president's tendency to say things that were false, he said.
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Shortly after President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with "fire and fury" during the first year of his presidency, then-White House chief of staff John Kelly explained one of the challenges to his position.
Two weeks after Trump made the unexpected comment in August 2017, Kelly privately said the president did not fully grasp the implication of his messages, according to ABC chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl's new book, "Front Row at the Trump Show."
"He needs to understand that 18 and 19-year-old people are going to die," Kelly said in Karl's book. "This is big-boy and big-girl s--t. You have to understand people will die because of these decisions."
Kelly, a retired four-star general, is the father of Marine Corps 1st Lt. Robert Kelly. Robert, 29, died in a landmine attack in Afghanistan in 2010.
In order to lessen Trump's impulsivity, Kelly developed a system to "overwhelm him with facts" - in an attempt to counter the president's tendency to say things that were false, he said.
Trump has given numerous anecdotes about his friends and business partners throughout his tenure in the White House and the Trump Organization. After Trump recalled a conversation about voter fraud with professional golfer Bernhard Langer, whom he referred to as a friend, Langer's daughter said her father was "not a friend of President Trump's" and that she did not "know why he would talk about him," the New York Times previously reported.
"The president will say, 'I heard from a friend,'" Kelly said, according to Karl, "and we will say, 'That's not true.'"
While Trump's rhetoric of "fire and fury" did not result in direct military action with North Korea, Kelly was frustrated with his role, multiple news outlets reported at the time.
Kelly was selected as Trump's chief of staff after Reince Priebus was ousted in July 2017. As a former general who spent most of his life as a US Marine, Kelly was long viewed as a choice to bring discipline to what had been a chaotic West Wing.
Upon his arrival, Kelly drastically limited the White House staff's unfettered access to Trump, a move that reportedly included members of the president's own family - his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump.
Kelly made several private and public comments about his frustration, including telling one White House visitor who was taking in the surroundings, "This is my hell," Karl wrote in the book.
Karl notes in the book that Kelly "agreed to allow me to quote this and other previously off-the-record remarks he made while he was chief of staff," a move that other Marine Corps generals previously on Trump's staff, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, declined to do out of respect for the office of the presidency.
Kelly was fired in December 2018, months after his relationship with the president reportedly grew sour. He was replaced by Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney.
After he fired Kelly, Trump said he "was way over his head" in the job and that now he "just can't keep his mouth shut." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kelly's remarks as reported in Karl's new book.