The hiring of Gen. John Kelly as the new White House chief of staff gives President Donald Trump the opportunity to regroup and for the administration to stop resembling a telenovela, said Mack McLarty, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
Speaking Sunday on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show hosted by John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York, McLarty said this “president kind of thrives on chaos. It is one thing to do that in a campaign, [but he] needs to pivot from the campaign to governing."
McLarty praised Kelly as “a good, solid, serious choice for that important position and stressed that in order to succeed he needs to “get a government in place. You have to get your team on the field, [and] the Trump Administration has not done that.”
He stressed that “You’ve got to get your legislative agenda, what you ran on, in place and accomplished, [especially after] Trump had a big setback when he could not get the Republican-controlled House and Senate to pass healthcare.”
McLarty said that former chief of staff Reince Priebus was blamed for the failure to pass healthcare, although he was never “fully empowered by President Trump to do the job."
McLarty, who referred to the post of chief of staff as "the chief javelin catcher," said it is a “tough and demanding position.”
He criticized the Trump administration so far for “Too much drama, there’s way too much partisanship and there’s not enough focus on the people’s business.”
However, McLarty stressed that Kelly might be the person who can help turn it around, because he “is a person of real accomplishment. He is a serious person. He does not suffer fools easily."
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