Trump reveals departure of Secretary General, John Kelly

Donald Trump announced Saturday the departure of his closest adviser, White House Secretary General John Kelly, adding a new twist to his team’s recovery in a context troubled by the Russian investigation and before the election of 2020.

“John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year,” Donald Trump told reporters at the White House, saying his successor’s name would be announced “in a day or two.”

And Donald Trump to specify that he could initially appoint an acting replacement.

The chief of staff, secretary general of the White House, is a key figure in the US presidency. He is the right arm of the president, and the coordinator of the action of the administration.

“He’s a great guy,” said the 45th President of the United States about John Kelly, saying he “enjoyed his services.”

Donald Trump had been suggesting for weeks that he was not completely satisfied with John Kelly. “There are some things he does that I like a lot and some things he does that I do not like,” he said in mid-November. “At some point he will want to leave”.

Questions about an impending departure of John Kelly were becoming more pressing in recent days, the US media insisting on the deterioration of relations between the two men. Some even claimed that they had come to stop talking to each other.

Before becoming Donald Trump’s senior advisor to the White House in July 2017, Retired Marine General Kelly was the Minister of Homeland Security for the first six months of the presidency.

There, like Donald Trump, he defended an extremely firm vision of US immigration policy.

He arrived at the White House just months after Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey and appointed special prosecutor Robert Mueller to investigate the suspicions of collusion between the campaign team. of the real estate mogul and Moscow.

His mission had been to restore some order in a chaotic and often confused White House, marked by the instinctive and unpredictable reactions of the president.

– “God punished me” –

The task was considerable and John Kelly sometimes showed signs of discouragement. “I guess I had to do something wrong and God punished me,” he said last March in a tone of self-deprecation about his duties in the White House.

“He is leaving a position that is often ungrateful, but John Kelly has my eternal gratitude,” said Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan.

The announcement of the departure of 68-year-old John Kelly follows two important new appointments to the US President by 24 hours.

Donald Trump has decided Friday to entrust the Ministry of Justice to William Barr, a respected Republican lawyer, a portfolio of great importance since it falls under the supervision of the Russian investigation of the prosecutor Mueller. He also appointed State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as US ambassador to the UN to replace Nikki Haley.

The first half of the Trump Presidency has been marked by great instability in key positions of advisers or ministers. But with the departure of John Kelly, he shows the willingness to approach the second part of his term with a renewed team.

The United States will switch early next year in a pre-election period ahead of the 2020 election.

Donald Trump has already announced that he would seek a second term, while many contenders Democrats furbish their weapons before a primary election that must designate whoever will challenge it.

For the Republican billionaire, these first fruits of the campaign will take place under the threatening shadow of the investigation of the prosecutor Mueller. He released new elements of the case on Friday, revealing contacts between a relative of candidate Trump in 2015 and a Russian intermediary.

These contacts were not successful, and nothing to date can establish a collusion between Moscow and the team of the Republican candidate, became president in 2016.

To replace John Kelly, the US media insistently refers to the name of Nick Ayers, current chief of staff of Vice President Mike Pence. He is a young 36-year-old Republican political strategist with a radically different profile from John Kelly.