John Kelly, the former chief of staff for the Trump administration, has said that despite his former boss’ public display of confidence, he thinks the former commander-in-chief is actually “scared s—less.”
“This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you, take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before,” Kelly told US media.
After his arraignment, former US President Donald Trump spoke to his supporters, portraying the indictment and coming trial as a political witch hunt.
“Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country,” Trump told his supporters.
But Kelly is not the only former member of the Trump administration to claim Trump is less confident in private. Former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told US media that the one-time president wants to keep the crowds cheering and his staff wants to keep him too busy to dodge his ire.
“It’s part public relations and part babysitting,” Grisham said. “He wants people to see the cheering crowds so they don’t think anything is going wrong. It’s also because the staff around him want to keep him busy and wants to have people cheering for him and giving him the ego stroke that he’ll need so they don’t have to deal with him being completely pissed.”
Kelly spent more than two years in the Trump White House as chief of staff before Trump replaced him in 2019 after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. The last months of Kelly’s time in the White House were tumultuous, with reports indicating the pair did not speak to each other for the last few months of Kelly’s tenure.
Grisham served as an aide during the Trump campaign before becoming press secretary in 2019. She was reportedly forced out of that role by then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and became the chief of staff for then-first lady Melania Trump, before abruptly resigning after the January 6 riots and just weeks before Trump’s term was set to end.