MSNBC host Chris Matthews said on Thursday that if he were President Donald Trump, he would fire Chief of Staff John Kelly for putting him in a cage and trying control the White House’s paper flow.
On Hardball, Matthews, during a conversation with Ron Reagan about Reagan’s father’s Chief of Staff Jim Baker who let Reagan be Reagan while just keeping the discipline, said “this guy” Kelly’s job “is to make sure nobody gets to see” Trump “unless they go through me.”
“And now no paper moves to [Trump] like he’s controlling the cage,” Matthews continued. “Like nothing gets into the cage without me … if I were Trump, I’d fire him just for saying that.”
Matthews then added that no matter how much Kelly may want to control Trump, “he can’t control Trump” at 6 a.m. when Trump starts “burping out” tweets.
Politico reported earlier in the day that Kelly’s new system “is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven’t been vetted.” Kelly’s globalist deputy, Kristjen Nielson, “is also expected to assume an integral role” in the process, according to the report, even though she, like nearly everyone else in Trump’s West Wing, does not understand Trump’s voters or his movement.