Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly admits: 'It was a killer' working for Trump

MORRISTOWN — Retired Gen. John Kelly defended Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key witness in President Donald Trump's impeachment, while pushing back on his ex-boss's claim that the media is the "enemy of the state."

For more than an hour, Kelly focused on the "Governance Versus Politics" topic promised during his speaking appearance Wednesday at the Mayo Performing Arts Center.

Eventually admitting he clashed on several issues with Trump during his tumultuous term as the president's chief of staff, Kelly finally addressed repeated questions from the audience about the personal difficulties he encountered in the West Wing.

"I'm disappointed in myself for leaving, but it was a killer, I mean, no joke," Kelly said about serving Trump, starting as secretary of Homeland Security before replacing Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff in June 2017.

Like many key West Wing staffers, however, Kelly eventually left his position at the end of 2018 amid reports he had fallen out of favor with Trump.

In Morristown, Kelly spoke for 45 minutes as a featured speaker in the Drew University Forum lecture series, followed by a 30-minute audience Q&A.

His remarks and answers touched on several hot-button issues related to the president.

They included the handling of two soldiers: Vindman, who testified at the Trump impeachment hearings, and CPO Edward Gallagher, whose rank and pay were reinstated by Trump after the Navy SEAL's conviction for violating military law by posing for photos with the body of an ISIS fighter.

The conversation Vindman overheard, he said, "essentially changed U.S. policy toward Ukraine."

Of Vindman, he said, "He did exactly what we teach them to do, from cradle to grave: He told his boss."

Gallagher, he said, "Was not a guy that represents our military in any way, shape or form. He should have been ashamed of himself. The idea that the commander in chief intervened there, in my opinion, was exactly the wrong thing to do."

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He also said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been "playing" Trump.

“He will never give his nuclear weapons up,” Kelly said. “I never did think Kim would do anything other than play us for a while, and he did that, fairly effectively.”

Kelly identified other issues where he clashed with Trump, including the Muslim immigration ban and the president's repeated characterization of the media as "the enemy of the state."

"The media, in my view, and I feel very strongly about this, is not the enemy of the people," he said. "We need a free media. That said, you have to be careful about what you are watching and reading, because the media has taken sides. So if you only watch Fox News, because it's reinforcing what you believe, you are not an informed citizen."

The Q&A session included an extended confrontation about separating immigrant families on the U.S. southern border with Karol Ruiz, an attorney and co-president of Wind of the Spirit, a Morristown nonprofit immigrant resource center.

Other Wind of the Spirit members joined several other groups outside the theater to protest Kelly's appearance, including divinity students from the Drew University Theological School.

Inside, Kelly was twice interrupted by protesters who stood up and shouted, "Hey, Kelly, separating families is inhumane." Both were removed by security.

During his remarks, however, while acknowledging "a crisis on the U.S. southern border," Kelly said the vast majority of people crossing there "are overwhelmingly good people, are not all rapists, they're not all murderers, and it's wrong to characterize them that way. The fact, is, though, is they are crossing illegally."

He also expressed displeasure with a Washington culture of elected leaders more concerned about their party and their own reelection than what is best for the nation.

"They lose perspective, I think, on what they are supposed to be doing," Kelly said.

He spoke of encountering one Republican during a meeting and asking him, "Just out of curiosity, I know this is good for the GOP, but is this good for America? And the guy, who's a decent guy, goes, 'Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.' "

"I guess I feel bad, in a way, that I did leave," Kelly said Wednesday. "But I stood firm and managed to get him to listen to all sorts of inputs."

After he left the White House, he said, he worried whether Trump would find someone else who “was willing to stand up to him.”

Referring to the continued drama, Kelly said, “I knew this would happen."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com Twitter: @wwesthoven