Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly is shocked by the support his ex-boss is receiving for his 2024 presidential bid.
Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff under Trump, left the role in December 2018 after falling out with the former president. Kelly has been a critic of Trump since, even calling for his removal following the January 2021 Capitol attacks. He has previously said Trump belittled U.S. service members and veterans, an allegation that Trump has called “fake.”
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has recently been shown to be leading President Joe Biden in five out of the six key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College released early November.
Multiple national polls also show the former president leading Biden despite Trump’s legal troubles, as he faces a wave of indictments at both the state and federal levels. The former president has been sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James and indicted in four separate cases: two brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith at the federal level, one by the Manhattan district attorney, and another from prosecutors in Georgia. He has denied wrongdoing in all cases.
Kelly is questioning the amount of support Trump has been able to gain despite the former president’s legal woes, according to The Washington Post.
“What’s going on in the country that a single person thinks this guy would still be a good president when he’s said the things he’s said and done the things he’s done?” Kelly said in a recent interview, according to the newspaper. “It’s beyond my comprehension he has the support he has.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump via email for comment.
“I came out and told people the awful things he said about wounded soldiers, and it didn’t have half a day’s bounce. You had his attorney general Bill Barr come out, and not a half a day’s bounce. If anything, his numbers go up. It might even move the needle in the wrong direction. I think we’re in a dangerous zone in our country,” the retired four-star general said.
Meanwhile, Trump recently dismissed Kelly’s criticism as “lies” and “fake stories” a day after the former White House official went on the record with CNN to reiterate Trump’s alleged statements on the U.S. troops.
In a post to Truth Social in October, Trump called Kelly “the dumbest of my Military people,” adding that he was “incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog.'”
“He had no heart or respect for people, so I hit him hard—Made no difference to me,” Trump wrote. “He’s already on record defending me all over the place. Nobody loves the Military like I do!”
Other notable former Trump aides have also spoken out against the possibility of a second term for Trump, citing a multitude of reasons including the 91 criminal charges against him, his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and his false claims of election fraud, among others.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Republican who worked as an aide in Trump’s White House, said last week that she is terrified to think that the former president may once again serve in the Oval Office.
“Got an advance copy of @jonkarl’s new book: Tired of Winning and it paints a scary picture of an increasingly isolated, unhinged Trump who is surrounded by those who won’t challenge him. It’s a must read. Terrifying to think he may be POTUS again,” Griffin wrote on X.
Meanwhile,…
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