White House Chief of Staff John Kelly used to threaten to quit as leverage to get staffers and President Donald Trump to follow his orders, The New York Times reports.
Kelly doesn't use that tact much anymore, the Times reports, but it paints a portrait of the iron-fisted chief of staff's approach to instituting a more professional operation in the West Wing, such as restricting open access to Trump.
But while Kelly has succeeded in restoring order to a once chaotic environment, somewhat, the Times reports that morale in the White House has gotten worse in the six months since the retired Marine Corps general replaced Reince Priebus as chief of staff.
Part of that can be chalked up to Kelly's reported failure to build "strong personal alliances" within the White House.
Some of it, too, is attributed to Kelly's strict enforcement of adhering to a chain of command in the West Wing, but some of it is also attributable to exhaustion of aides and staffers who are dreading a second year of working in the tumultuous administration, the Times reports.
"He brought some order to the chaos that was there, but it’s a long way from a functioning White House," Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told the Times. "His role, from time to time, I’ve considered to be destructive, sometimes constructive.
The Trump administration has a record number of departures after Year 1, and Kelly has been unable to fill many of the vacancies in the White House, the Times reports.
Kelly, the Times reports, remains unconcerned by the departures despite warnings to the president that he could face even more departures.
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