John Kelly shocked staff with speech 'hostile' to Trump, tell-all book reveals

Book by ex-White House aide Cliff Sims, seen by Guardian, says chief of staff indicated ‘country first, president second’ approach

Tom McCarthy
Sat 19 Jan 2019 11.00 GMT

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly introduced himself to staff members with a speech that was “potentially hostile” to Donald Trump, according to a new memoir by a former Trump communications aide.

The aide, Cliff Sims, described being shocked by a speech Kelly made to staff at the Eisenhower executive office building shortly after Kelly replaced outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Sims writes in his book Team of Vipers, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian, that Kelly’s speech “hammered” on the theme of service to country coming first, and service to the president second.

“Kelly seemed to be saying that… it might be necessary to subvert the president’s wishes in service of some amorphous higher calling,” Sims writes.

Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, was credited with bringing a degree of basic functionality to the White House when he took the chief of staff job in July 2017, firing the errant communications director Anthony Scaramucci and pushing out chief strategist Steve Bannon.

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