John Kelly

Bloomberg television show Peer to Peer Conversations. So let's talk about first what it was like to be chief of staff to President Trump. Was it all that you thought it would be in terms of the difficulty, more difficult than you thought, or and you pleased you did the job. It was certainly amongst the hardest jobs I've had in my life. But I would say this as well, after as much time as I had in the military, it

was the most important thing I ever did. For eighteen months, a staff the president the way I think a president should be staffed, presenting him options, presenting him the experts, and with him to talk and hash things out. That's what the chief of staff does. That was vitally important, and for eighteen months I was there. I think who staff the president very effectively. So was it the hardest job you've ever had, the most memorable job, the most

enjoyable job, or just another very interesting job? Now, it was very very hard, but very meaningful. Uh, not very enjoyable, but you know, I mean it's it was it's staff in the president United States. I mean you're trying to bring together not only a White House staff, but the entire federal government to help him make the kind of decisions, whether it's economic decisions, social decisions, or you know, life

and death wartime decisions. On Washington. It's often said that people stab you in the back, but also sometimes they stab you in the front. And that's the job that often the cheapest staff is said to have. You get criticized by everybody. So did you feel that the criticism by people were the hacks on you just for any reason something that was unfair or not tolerable? You just got used to it, Yeah, I would. I would tell

you I wasn't used to. One of the things that struck me right away that I was not used to coming out of the military was the intense personal ambition, um, that that people have. And because if that gets out of hand, which I think it was out of hand certainly before my time, and it continued a bit while I was there. Uh, people start to do things like leak to the press things that are untrue, half true, not just towards people at the top like me, but

their their their colleagues. One of the things I did very early on at the when I took over the White House. Who's got all of the staff together, and there's a lot of them. So I had to do several sessions and just said, you know, nowhere in the oath of office that you take to you know, support defend the Constitution United States. Nowhere in there does it say that you should be talking to the press unless

that's part of your job and authorize. Nowhere does it say you should be stabbing your colleagues in the back so that you look better you serve the nation, um. And if if you take the o seriously, you've got a job, and I want you to stay. If you if you can't do that, find find another place to work. When you're in the military and you tell people you do X, Y or Z, they jump over there in trouble or they're going to be court martial or something.

When you tell people as cheaper staff that they should do X, Y or z and they don't do it, what can you really do about it? Well, let me go back to your original stame. In the military. If you tell someone to do X, Y or z, um, we expect people to question orders, to push back. So I mean, I can't as a commander know everything in the White House. U, your right is not. I mean, you could fire people, and I had to fire a few people, but very very few. They were very disruptive.

But I had good people. The vast majority of the people David that worked there of good people. They just need some direction. So when Donald Trump was elected, you were already retired from the military. I had retired from the military. Uh less, well and about eight months at that point, never wanting to work again. Okay, And did you know Donald Trump at any point? But not in anyone like that. So did you met you met him

in the transition. I assume I received a phone call in late November on a Saturday, and uh, they asked me if I wouldn't consider coming up to Bedminster to meet with the President elect, and uh, talked to him about going into the administration. My wife after the phone call, asked me, you know, what was that all about? And I explained to her and I said what he thinks? She said, well, you know, uh, if when nothing else

is a family, we were a family of service. So why don't you go up and at least talk to them? And so I went up the next day to Bedminster, talked to the President elect. Bryan's previous was there and a couple of other people. We had a short chit chat. But ten days later he asked me to come up to New York City to Trump Tower. Went up there and you offered me the DHS job, And did you say? I accept right on the spot. And did you feel

you really wanted to go into that job again? I know, up to that point in time, certainly no other you know, my lifestyle with service to the nation. Obviously I had to get out of out of the Marine Corps. I was getting too old and and whatnot. But the opportunity to serve was was something I really look forward to, and DHS was a great job. The men and women at DHS just phenomenal patriots and they're they're really unsung heroes. So you did that job for how long before you

became chiefest right at six months? I left the job in the thirty one July. But did the President call you a few times before and say I don't not don't like my chief of stafford and make a change. How did you get asked to do the chef of staff job? It was, it was around It was a couple of days before it was announced. During my time at DHS, I didn't go to the White House a lot did need to. Most cabinet people are busy doing what they do. But he and I had a previous

discussion on a couple of things that relative to the staff. Anyways, he called me and said, hey, I really would like you to come on over and be the chief of staff. I need you to need you in the leadership to UH and put this place in the direction. My wife wouldn't want me to do this. It's a terrible job. I don't want to do this. I said, I really like DHS. The people were making a difference. An awful lot of your agenda is wrapped up in UH DHS. But he said, I really need you to do this.

So I did it in prison asked, I did it. I'd like to talk about the job you did as chevas Tap before that I could talk about your background. So where are you are originally from? I grew up in Boston, UM, and your family was a blue collar family, very very blue collar. So your dad was a World War two vet. Um, he worked two jobs in his old life, you know, maileman and railroad greatest man I Avenue. So, Um, you went to high school where St. Mary's High School

and just outside of Boston. And when you graduated, what did you do? I went to almost a year of college. I had the war was graduating. N the war was on coming from the kind of neighborhoo I came from. I mean every man in my life growing up as a boy was either a World War Two vet or a Korean War vet. That's all they talked about. And so that you know, we had a draft back then, it was relatively easy to get out of the draft.

I mean you just had to come in with a doctor's note or go to college and a lot of deferments. I didn't want to get out, and so when I passed my draft physical, which would have brought me into the army, like most of the guys in my neighborhood went in the Marine Corps. I entered the Marine Corps, and you became a lieutenant or what was your I became a private. Well, I went from private to private first class. Ultimately, ultimately I made sergeant as an infantryman

made sergeant. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. So I get out of the Marine Corps, but stayed in in in a program that continued my training while I was going to college. And as soon as I graduated from college University of Massachusetts in Boston, I got commissioned, went back to the Marine Corps and stayed forever. So the highest you can become early as a fourth star general star and you became a four star. John became a four star. Did you ever expect when you were just

beginning in the Marine corps'd be a four star general? No? I mean when I was in an enlisted Marine I wanted to be hopefully a n c O. Someday that's corporal. I made sergeant. Fits held. Okay, so we're in the Marine Corps and as you rise up, eventually one of your assignments is to go into Iraq after the invasion in two thousand three, So you were in combat and you do you expect that you would survive. It was

fairly dangerous. Well, it is day. I mean there's a lot of shooting and bombs and whatnot, but with marines, and you take that on as as a as a possibility. But we were you know, we when we were designing the campaign plan, uh, you know, one of the things we did was to you know, the the understand the Iraqi army was nothing is even close to us. But we designed a strategy that would minimize the amount of damage to the country, in the amount of death to

the Iraqi Army. We went there in our mindset was that we were there to We were not there to conquer them, but to break them. So we didn't want to kill a lot of them, and I mean the army obviously, you'd always try to not kill the yet Rain Corps and the army going in, I think it would all be over in one or two weeks, and that people would be cheering you while they were cheering us, which was almost everywhere we went. They come out in huge numbers. But the attack part of it, I mean

was he in a sense was easy. We know where we're gonna win, We're going to get the bad Dad and you know, enlightening time. And but what we kept asking in the Kuwait desert leading up to the invasion in March was who's going to take this over from us? You know? Mr Rumsfeld had come out very strong and said we are not with the U. S. Military is not going to get involved in nation building. And our question was, Okay, who are we going to turn that

over to? Because we should start thinking about that now. And so the idea that we were going to leave quickly, which we military did start to do, but not have anyone that turned it over. It was really that was caused us great concern as military men. So did men working for you get killed under you? And so what do you do in that situation? You you send a letter to the next to ken or or how how do you deal with that emotionally? Yeah? Um, well, I mean it's it's it's part of the it's part of

the lifestyle. It's not an easy part of the lifestyle. You know. When I was when I was a commander there, when I went back for a subsequent tour, I was the senior marine commander on the ground, and there are a lot of things that you might list that you would be woken up for in the middle of the night, and I only had two of them. A missing American UM because then we had to go to general courts to find that person. Uh, and then a death and people would say, why did you want to get woken

up on the deaths? There's nothing you can do as well. I think I owe the marine sailor soldier in their family at least to be woken up and someone to tell me this young man, this young woman just died in the defense of their country. Let's talk about when you after you retired. For a while, before you joined the Trump administration, you were in the business world or

what were you doing? Not very much. I started working with the National Defense University UM, which is part of d O D. And then I just started to get a couple of opportunities to be on boards. I joined those boards, but almost as soon as I joined them, I was I was disengaging because I had I was in the process of going to DHS. Right. So you're on some corporate boards for the first time. You're making more money than brazilianly you made in the in the

marine corps. Not huge money, so, but more than the Marine Corps. All right, But so going back in the government, it was actually another cut in salary. But your family didn't say anything about that. I guess what was interesting going into DHS. It was about fifty thou dollars more than I made a year as as a as a

four star. And then what I didn't know, and my wife said to me after a couple of weeks being at the White House, she said, I think our pay is wrong because the paycheck is quite a bit smaller. I didn't realize that took a pretty major pay cut to be the chief of STAF. Didn't ask the president. Money is not relevant. So let's talk about your family

for a moment. When you're a fourth star, you're often traveling all over the place, so h your wife gets to travel with you and some of your assignments or not. How many different places did you have to move as a as a general? Well, when I was my wife, she loved that question. Um. When I was at in Miami, my wife went to UH Guantanamo obey for three years so we could have Thanksgiving dinner with the troops down there at the detention facility. I took her to Haiti.

I took her to Ondors once maybe twice, maybe Honduras in Guatemala one each, and then once to Peru. What about Paris or London? None of that. And so you have three children, uh, your father three children? Right? Your oldest son is in the military still, he's a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, fairly recently promoted, just back from his one of his tours from in Iraq. And you have a daughter, daughter, and what is she doing? But she was with the FBI prior to that, Actually

she was. She was worked with these the wounded men and women, mostly men coming back from the wars at Bethesda Naval Hospital. And then she went into the FBI. She was with the hostage rescue team as one of the support people for several years. And you have another son who lost his life in military combats. Right. He was a started off as as an enlisted Marine and then became a second lieutenant and was killed in Afghanistan. And h did you and your wife say having two

sons in the Marines was an awful sacrifice for any family? Now, it's our way of life. That may sound strange to the listeners, but it is a way of life, and they make their own to make their own decisions. What would you say is the best training to be chief of staff in the White House, and particularly with President Trump?

What do you think it's the best training? I think one, you've got to tell the boss the truth when when you don't think he's going down the right road, not in front of a bunch of people, but when you don't think he's going down the right road, to tell him that truth to pol right, someone in the room has got to say at the beginning of every conversation and at the end, is this good for America? So let's go forward now to chief of staff? So you know,

the chief of staff sounds like a good title. Everybody presuming in the government is responsive to you. You can call any cabinets secretary and tell him what to do. Is not the way it works. I would not say I'd tell him what to do. I'd suggest, I mean they are cabinet members. Uh. You know. The President puts out as you know. I mean, you don't whether it's tweets or just his his time with the press, and he does a lot of discussion with the press. He

puts out his feelings on different things. More often than not, I would get calls from the cabinet people saying, hey, I just heard him say. This is that a change? Should we react to it? Um So the President is never hesitant to to pick up the phone and talk to his own cabinet members. And would you ever say the President, maybe the tweets are too much to keep up with, or maybe you shouldn't tweet as much. Never did.

The President feels very very strongly, whether you agree with this or not, very strongly that he's not dealt with by the press fairly, and that his tweeting goes around the press and gets his his agenda out, his word out to the world without having to rely on a press conference. Now, let's talk about a few substance issues. Early in the administration, when you were at the Department of Homeland Security, there was the issue of immigration, the

ban on immigration and so forth. Were you alerted to that when you were there, And how do you think that ultimately it is now working out? Just a couple of three days after I became the DHS secretary, the EO came out on the so called travel ban. And you know, as a sidebar, I would say that the countries and the seven countries involved. Uh in the President's thinking, Uh, we're all dysfunctional, you know, I mean around you know, everyone knows it's a hot bit of terrorism. The other

countries were dysfunctional. Uh. The entire population of Muslim population of those countries added up to about the world's population. The point is those countries we had, they don't have a process that we could bless and say. The people that they say are coming out of those countries to come to the United States for whatever reason, there's no way to really tell who they are because these countries are in a state of collapse. It could have been

done better. Back to David, the staff process, if that had been when I was there, say several months later, the idea that the President might want to do that, and he has strong feelings on immigration, we all know that. Uh. We had run that through this process and uh and and and at least had a better release plan. When you were at the White House, you also had the

wall issue. President really wanted to build a wall. You were quoted a few times and saying, well, it doesn't have to be a concrete wall, can be see through or something like that. Was there a difference between you and the president on that, and do you think the wall is a good policy. When I got the DHS, I went to the experts, the Customs of Border Protection people that that men, you know, the bastion down there, that man the watched our on the and said do

we need a wall? And they said, or some physical barrier? The university said we need more we have. Remember back in I think two thousand six, the Congress authorized over six fifty miles of wall and UH Senators Clinton, Schumer, and Obama all voted for it. So that was in two thousand six, six hundred fifty miles. What we what the CVP people would tell the me is we want to improve that barrier, and we can give you if you If you tell me I can get miles, I

can tell you exactly where to put it. If you tell me I can have a thousand more miles, I'll tell you exactly where I want it. They also said that we want to be able to see through the wall because we want to be able to track what's going on on the other side. And just as importantly, according to them, and they're their experts, we want the people that are contemplating jumping the wall to see us, because if they see us, they don't do it. Now, he had a meeting twice. He met twice with the

leader of North Korea. Did you and I think that was a good idea to meet without advanced preparation about what would happen? And do you think the policy of meeting actually usually works or you should always have advanced preparation when you have these summit meetings. There's a lot of advanced preparation. There's a lot of advanced preparation, a lot of letters back and forth. People at State and

other places have their context there. But I'll applaud the President in that he looked back on the last I don't know, seventy years of trying to deal with the North Korean leadership and none of that was working. And he's the kind of guy I grew to know that wanted to um have tried personally. So I'll pick the phone up and talk to the guy I want to meet with him and try to develop a relationship. And

that's that's who he is. But I think many times it was all the other stuff hasn't worked for seventy years, But the heck clicks. Let's give it a try. Some people would say the president was very reluctant to criticize Putin for anything, and he seemed overly friendly with him compared to other presidents. Do you think that's a fair comment and why do you think it was? Well, the explanations.

It's much like with Kim I mean, he he things had not been working very well over the last thirty five years, and he is you know, he's again He's to pick the phone up and talk to the guy kind of guy. Was it complicated to have the president's family in the government at the time. There is an influence that has to be has to be dealt with and today if you were I don't mean by no means,

I mean Mrs Trump first, ladies a wonderful person. If you had to um advise somebody who's going to be a chief of staff in the future, what would you say is the best training to be chief of staff in the White House? And particularly with President Trump? What do you think it's the best training? I think one, you've got to tell the boss the truth when when you don't think he's going down the right road, not in front of a bunch of people, but you don't

think he's going down the right road. To tell him that truth to pop right, someone in the room has got to say at the beginning of every conversation and at the end, is this good for America? So when you tell the president private, I think you should do something different than you want to do. Did he like yell or does he have a discussion on I'd say more often the naughty said okay, let's bring them back in. So, if you had to do it all over again, would

you have taken the job of chief of staff? Are you glad you took that job? Well? Again, that I was. I was drafted into the job. Um, But knowing everything you don't know, yes, Um, as hard as it was for I feel very strongly for eighteen I don't know what's happened since. But for eighteen months President Donald J. Trump on every issue was well staffed, It was well informed. Ah, we gave him options. Well, I'll just leave a coat. As you look back on your career, what would you

say you're most proud of having achieved? And did your parents live to see you become a general? My dad did? Um? The thing I well and is many things, I would say, The thing what did I achieved. I for over forty years, I served and served the nation in peace and war. Um, it goes with us saying I'm most proud of my family and my kids. But for over forty nearly forty five years, serve the nation in piece of war, served

and honorably with integrity. So do you consider yourself retired or are you going to be active in the business world. I don't know how to retire, So what are you plan to spend most of them? No idea what I'm gonna do, But I don't know how to retire. If you consider the highest calling of mankind private equity, I'm not sure about that. Not sure about that, David. That was former White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly