Of all the officials once loyal to Donald Trump who’ve since turned against him, arguably none have done so more dramatically than John Kelly.
The former Marine general who became Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff has fired off a fusillade of attacks against his onetime boss this week with just days to go until Election Day, accusing the Republican nominee of being a full-blown fascist who spoke enviably of Adolf Hitler during his first stint in the Oval Office.
His verdict on Trump—which alarmingly echoes that of Mark Milley, another general who served in Trump’s administration—is shaped by a yearslong personal history with the former president and decades of service.
ADVERTISEMENT
Decorated Veteran and Gold Star Father
Kelly, 74, was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and first joined the Marine Corps in 1970. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Boston he became a commissioned officer and rose through the ranks, eventually retiring as a four-star general in 2016.
His service included leading the Multinational Force-West in Iraq during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. Kelly also commanded the Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North before his final military post leading U.S. Southern Command. In that role, he took responsibility for Guantanamo Bay and American operations in Central and South America.
Towards the end of his time in the armed forces, Kelly’s own son was killed in action. First Lieutenant Robert Michael Kelly, 29, died instantly after stepping on a landmine while leading a Marine platoon in Afghanistan in 2010. Four days later, John Kelly—who was at the time the most senior American officer to lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan—gave a speech in which he spoke about the sacrifices made by those in the military.
“If anyone thinks you can somehow thank them for their service and not support the cause for which they fight—our country—these people are lying to themselves,” Kelly said, according to The Washington Post. “More important, they are slighting our warriors and mocking their commitment to this nation.”
From Marine Corps to MAGA World
Less than a year after retiring from the military, Trump asked Kelly to serve as his Secretary of Homeland Security. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate on Jan. 20, 2017. Kelly’s tenure involved overseeing some of Trump’s most controversial political projects—including the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries and boosting efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.
For his loyal efforts, Trump rewarded Kelly after just six months leading the DHS by making him his chief of staff—replacing Reince Priebus—a move which commentators saw as intended to bring order to the White House after months of tumult. Announcing Kelly’s new appointment on Twitter in July 2017, Trump called the general a “Great American” and a “Great Leader.”
“John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security,” Trump wrote. “He has been a true star of my Administration.”
The admiration didn’t last. By the spring of the following year, media reports claimed that Kelly was referring to Trump as “an idiot” (Kelly said the claims were “BS”) and months later they had allegedly stopped speaking to each other altogether.
When Trump announced on Twitter in December 2018 that Kelly would be replaced as chief of staff, he was still praising Kelly as someone “who has served our Country with distinction.”
The War of Words
Since leaving Trump’s administration, Kelly has been scathing about his old boss—and Trump has returned the favor.
After Kelly publicly criticized several of Trump’s handling of several foreign and domestic policy issues at an event in February 2020, Trump spoke about how he “terminated” Kelly as his chief of staff, a move he said he “couldn’t do fast enough.”
“Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him,” Trump tweeted at the time. “He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut.”
Their war of words only intensified from there.
The day after a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Kelly said he would support using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. “I don’t think that it’ll happen, but I think the Cabinet should meet and discuss this because the behavior yesterday and in the weeks and months before that has just been outrageous from the president,” Kelly said in a CNN interview, adding that the riot was a “direct result of [Trump] poisoning the minds of people with the lies and the frauds.”
In 2023, Kelly also went on the record to confirm several stories which had previously Trump denied, including allegations that he’d disparaged American soldiers wounded and killed in combat. Among the most damning were comments reported by The Atlantic in 2020, in which Trump—while president—had privately called Marines “suckers” for getting killed. He also reportedly canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 after describing the fallen soldiers buried there “losers.”
Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations, with a campaign spokesperson claiming last year that Kelly had “totally clowned himself with these debunked stories he’s made up because he didn’t serve his president well while working as chief of staff.”
Kelly has not been deterred by the former president’s insults.
In an interview with The New York Times Tuesday, Kelly said that, in his view, Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” further claiming that the GOP nominee “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
He also claimed Trump had “more than once” claimed Adolf Hitler had done “some good things.”
A Trump spokesperson again claimed Kelly had “beclowned” himself with his allegations.
Separately, Kelly spoke to The Atlantic about how Trump had spoken admiringly of Hitler’s Nazi generals during his time in the White House. The report—which cites two sources as saying that Trump once said “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had”—included Kelly commenting on a story from the book The Divider: Trump in the White House about Trump once asking Kelly why he couldn’t “be like the German generals.”
“‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly said he’d responded to Trump. “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’”
