Melania Trump Exploits the John Kelly Power Vacuum

[DonViejo]

‘She can be a knife fighter.’

Asawin Suebsaeng, Sam Stein
11.13.18 11:10 PM ET

He was a stately general called in to replace the omnishambles with order. But since his first day as White House chief of staff, John Kelly’s grasp on power in Trumpworld has been tenuous.

Now, as Trump enters the back end of his first term in office, determined to shake up his team at the senior ranks and facing a Democratic-run House, Kelly’s grasp has been exposed as flimsier than ever. With the president mangling an overseas trip and infighting among White House staff nearing Civil War-like levels, the chief of staff appears to be more of a bystander to the chaos than a manager of it. No one, at this juncture, is particularly surprised.

“The people who think they can go in and control things are nuts,” a former senior Trump White House official told The Daily Beast. “There was this whole narrative that Kelly was supposed to be ‘the guy.’ Yeah, for like an hour,” I think it took him like a week to realize that, and they’ve been operating in that reality ever since.”

Kelly’s own future in the White House has long been the subject of speculation. And in the aftermath of the midterms, that is no different. Rumors have swirled, once more, that he soon may be out the door, though he and the president publicly have said he’ll stay around through the 2020 elections.

But the power vacuum that has been created in the absence of his leadership is already being filled by other key players. Chief among them is Melania Trump, who on Tuesday publicly advised, through a spokeswoman, that a top national security official be ousted—a move rarely, if ever, seen from a first lady’s office.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/melania-trump-exploits-the-john-kelly-power-vacuum?ref=home

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I'm not entirely convinced this is directly from Melania.

Sure, the announcement was from her office. But I don't think she has that kind of power or cache to pull it off. It could be Trump via her office, although Trump does like John Bolton and that's his #2 person. Melania is still at heart an undereducated, unsophisticated model from Eastern Europe. And she has no experience to be a Trump version of a Medici.

[Zoonart]

2. Melania Trump is 45's handler.

Just mho.

[flibbitygiblets]

3. His mushroom handler maybe

He picked her out of a catalogue (okay, magazine technically). She's cold and shiftless, but not exactly GRU material is she?

[Zoonart]

4. Actually she was "introduced" to him by one of his Russian oligarch buddies.

[sunonmars]

5. She is exactly that, designed to fit in and not show the true hand.