Elite right-wing commentators lauded Kelly for keeping Trump under control

For a segment of the right-wing press that likes Trump’s support for cutting taxes, banning abortion, dismantling the social safety net, and other traditional GOP positions — but dislikes the chaos he brings with them — Kelly’s July 2017 appointment as chief of staff was a godsend.

The conservative editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journalwrote at the time that Trump, not Kelly’s predecessor Reince Priebus, had been “the problem” at the White House and expressed faint hope that Kelly might be able to “impose some order on the staff” — if Trump listened to him.

Their hopes were apparently vindicated; when Trump announced in December 2018 that Kelly would be stepping down, the board showered him with praise in an editorial titled “Thank You, John Kelly.”

“There are many unpleasant jobs in the world, but somebody has to do them,” the piece began. “One is being Donald Trump’s chief of staff, and so as he prepares to be liberated from White House bondage this month, John Kelly deserves the nation’s gratitude.”

“He tried to establish order in the President’s schedule and meetings, to the extent that is possible, as well as a regular process for policy deliberations,” it continued. “Mr. Kelly did that well enough, and long enough, that the White House could negotiate tax reform.”

The board went on to bemoan the potential candidates to replace Kelly, noting, “Mr. Trump’s chaotic style is so outside management norms that we hesitate to suggest any names.”

Lowry was even more fulsome in his praise in a February 2018 piece for National Review headlined “John Kelly Shouldn’t Go Anywhere; In short, it is Kelly or bust.”

Lowry wrote that Kelly “is as close as it gets to an indispensable man in the Trump White House,” touting his ability to “intimidate the White House staff into a semblance of order.”

“Kelly has indeed been a restraining influence on Trump, even if that is difficult to believe,” he added. “Just imagine a White House with all those who have now mostly been locked out — Corey Lewandowski and Co.— back on the inside to do their utmost to create the chaos and self-valorizing leaking sufficient for Fire and Fury: The Sequel.”

(Lewandowski, who Trump fired from his 2016 campaign, officially joined the 2024 effort in September, though the notoriously dishonest and violent political operative seems to have subsequently lost influence within its ranks.)

And Gingrich, discussing potential Kelly replacements on Fox in December 2018, similarly stressed Kelly’s ability to keep Trump under control and tell him when his desires could not be met.

“He needs somebody strong enough to say no,” Gingrich said of the then-president. “This is a very strong-willed personality. He will run over a weaker person and they will rapidly lose control of the building.”

“Gen. Kelly was terrific because he is a four-star Marine and they are pretty tough, they are pretty unflinching,” Gingrich continued. “No chief of staff is going to dominate President Trump, but he needs a chief of staff strong enough to look him in the eye and say, ‘That's not a very good idea.’ And I hope he will pick somebody who is that strong.”

Kelly served at the highest levels of Trump's administration and says he is a fascist

The Journal editorial board, Lowry, and Gingrich were correct to worry about the prospect of an unhinged Trump unrestrained by a competent chief of staff. Mark Meadows, a former congressman who served in that role, oversaw the final chaotic months of Trump’s administration, during which Trump led a shambling response to the COVID-19 pandemic, threatened to use military force against protesters, and ultimately sought to subvert the results of the 2020 election and triggered the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Now Kelly, who served Trump as chief of staff for a year and a half, is speaking out about what he saw in the White House and the urgent danger he says the former president poses to the country. In interviews with The New York Times, he said of Trump and his plans for a second term:

• “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
• “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
• He “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
• “I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”
• “He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.”

Kelly is one of several high-ranking national security appointees in Trump’s administration who are warning the country that the former president is a fascist. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever,” remarks reportedly echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense.

And on Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on CNN that “it's hard to say that” Trump “doesn't” fit the definition of fascist, adding, “He certainly has those inclinations, and I think it's something we should be wary about.”

Trump would not be similarly restrained in a second term. They’re still on board.

Trump stresses on the campaign trail that the major difference between his presidency and a second term would be that he has learned to surround himself with loyalists who will not try to restrain him. His former aides spun up Project 2025, which aims to provide the former president with a vetted list of zealots to staff his administration and White House.

But none of this is giving pause to the people who praised Kelly’s ability to keep Trump in check.

The Journal’s editorial board is pooh-poohing the idea that Trump might be a fascist, claiming that “the evidence of Mr. Trump’s first term” purportedly shows that “whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances” — but Trump is explicitly preparing to free himself from such checks in a second term.

Lowry is writing in The New York Times about how Trump could actually win the election “on character.”

And Gingrich is predicting that Trump would be “dramatically more managerial and practical” in a second term.

Meanwhile, the man they touted for keeping Trump under control is publicly warning that Trump could destroy the American system.

The defining feature of right-wing media during the Trump era has been that you either back the former president despite your better instincts and morality, or you get excommunicated from the movement. That incentive structure — and the right-wing commentariat’s craven responses to it — explains the resulting media ecosystem rallying behind a lying felonious racist and conman who launched an insurrection and whose own former top aides describe as a fascist.