Kelly cracks down on West Wing back channels to Trump

Source: Politico | August 2, 2017 | Josh Dawsey

The new White House chief of staff is making it his first priority to gain control over the information that gets to the president.

When new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: Bad information getting into the president’s hands.

Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him — whether on paper or in briefings — because the president would make better decisions if given good information.

Kelly, a retired Marine general, faces an uphill path when it comes to his stated goal of instilling order in the White House, from aides who have directly reported to the president and don’t want to see their power curbed to Trump’s own itchy Twitter finger. In talks with congressional leaders, friends and longtime associates, he has bluntly described how serious the problems he faces in the West Wing are, according to more than a half-dozen people familiar with the conversations.

“John Kelly knows the challenges he is facing,” said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who spoke to Kelly after he took the job. “He’s not going to just stand to the side and watch the White House fall apart piece by

But several people who have spoken with him say Kelly believes that making sure Trump is getting good information is among the biggest challenges he faces as he takes over from Reince Priebus, the former Republican National Committee chairman who was dismissed by the president last week.

Since starting this week, Kelly has told aides that anyone briefing the president needs to show him the information first. The Trump West Wing tradition of aides dropping off articles on the president’s desk — then waiting for him to react, with a screaming phone call or a hastily scheduled staff meeting, must stop. He will not accept aides walking into the Oval Office and telling the president information without permission — or without the information being vetted.

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Kelly and senior West Wing officials don’t believe Trump will fully change. He is not going to stop tweeting, for example, and they expect him to keep dialing old friends in New York after hours — and that he will likely huddle with aides when Kelly is not around. Senior officials are likely to still give him articles to read without Kelly knowing. “He’s not under the impression he can tell Donald Trump, ‘Oh, you’re going to do it my way,” one Kelly associate said. “He’s not delusional about it.”

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