The best source for an opinion is usually straight from the horse’s mouth — in this case, the horse being Rahm Emanuel, the first White House Chief of Staff for ex-President Obama.
In this clip, Emanuel — who’s been the mayor of Chicago since 2011 — is asked by CNN’s Poppy Harlow to give an assessment of the performance of the brand-new Trump White House Chief of Staff, retired Marine General John Kelly.
Although Emanuel has been a lifelong Democrat, due to his former Washington role, he’s in a good position to judge whether Kelly has the potential to bring a much-needed sense of order and decorum to Trump’s inner circle and potentially prevent the president from “getting in his own way” (via tweeting and other efforts) and stymieing public relations exercises related to presidential policies and executive orders. Given recent media field days via leaks from the administration and the subsequent personnel shakeups at the White House, this has been a major issue that’s been needing to be resolved for some time.
Although Emanuel clearly colors the second part of his commentary because of his partisan nature, his observations about Kelly are probably more insightful than the average political observer’s due to his having held Kelly’s job himself not so long ago. Watch as Emanuel can’t help but give the general props in several ways for his early efforts.
