Regardless of whether White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was ever actually worthy of the moniker "adult," he's not "in the room" any longer when Donald Trump is making key decisions. In the wake of the West Wing’s recent security clearance scandal, Trump has gone rogue. Kelly reportedly had no immediate hand in Trump's decision to add the war-mongering John Bolton to his national security roster and he was nowhere to be seen when Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his fraudulent re-election during the "DO NOT CONGRATULATE" call. Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs writes:
Kelly wasn’t with the president last week when Trump abruptly decided to oust H.R. McMaster as national security adviser and replace him with John Bolton. Just two people were in the room for that decision: Trump and Bolton.
And Kelly is rarely on the line any more when Trump calls foreign leaders. Last week, when Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin days before the U.S. decided to expel dozens of Russian diplomats, Kelly wasn’t on the call. [...]
Lately, Kelly is less aware of what’s on Trump’s mind and what he’s planning to do next, according to several aides, with one describing the men as sometimes on different wavelengths. Trump doesn’t seek his input on staffing or policy decisions as much as he used to, and Kelly is no longer as successful in blocking access to former aides Kelly has described as disruptive.
Does Kelly’s diminished profile even matter? It's hard to know how much he ever really mitigated Trump's notorious lack of impulse control. But even when Kelly is "in the room" now, we end up with Girther-gate doc Ronny Jackson in line to run Veterans Affairs.
The chief of staff was in the loop on Trump’s decision to replace Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin with Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the president’s physician, an aide said. Trump and Kelly discussed the move several times, including in the Oval Office on Monday, and Kelly delivered the news to Shulkin in a phone call Wednesday afternoon, the aide said.
Apparently, Kelly's greatest functionality now is serving as Trump's Grim Reaper of Personnel, trying to inject some modicum of humanity into a process that the gutless Trump prefers to execute publicly by tweet rather than looking someone in the eye.