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The president's chief of staff was supposed to be a rare voice of reason in the White House, instead he denigrates women and espouses conspiracy theories and racism.
When he replaced Rience Priebus as White House chief of staff in late July, former Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly was supposed to be a rational, moderating influence on an impulsive president who surrounded himself with D.C. amateurs and self-promoting clowns.
Kelly may have made Trump's White House slightly less chaotic, but he's proving to be just as dangerous and resistant to facts as former Trump advisers like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.
In an inflammatory Monday interview with Fox News's Laura Ingraham -- which may have been an attempt to distract from the indictments of three former Trump associates -- Kelly spewed some outrageous lines (and lies).
Maybe most outrageous is that Kelly called Confederate general Robert E. Lee an "honorable man" and claimed the Civil War happened simply because people couldn't "compromise."
"Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up, gave up his country to fight for his state, which in 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it's different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand."
Kelly also said he believed Confederate monuments should not be removed from public spaces because, "Well, history's history."
Not helping accusations that he's a white supremacist who targets people of color, Kelly refused to apologize to Rep. Frederica Wilson, the Florida congresswoman who criticized Trump's insensitive phone call to Myeshia Johnson, a widow who lost her soldier husband in Niger. Kelly publicly denigrated Wilson, not just for critiquing Trump, but accused her of taking credit for an FBI building in Miami. A video later emerged that showed Kelly lied about his description of events concerning Wilson. Even with the tape, Kelly said he would never apologize to Wilson.
"Oh, no. No. Never. Well, I'll apologize if I need to. But for something like that, absolutely not. I stand by my comments."
Kelly also proved how desperate the White House is to blame Hillary Clinton for their failings, especially the Robert Mueller investigation bearing down on them. Even though Clinton's involvement in a 2010 uranium deal with Russia was scant at most -- and approved by nine government agencies, one of which included Clinton's State department -- Kelly pushed for an investigation into Clinton's actions, or non-actions, from seven years ago.
An "objective" investigator should look into the "accusations," Kelly told Ingraham.
If this is the smartest person in the Oval Office, we're more screwed than we initially imagined.
