John Kelly Archives - Public Seminar

Blue Monday

John Kelly Is a Present Danger to the Republic

With all due respect

December 10, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The White House has finally announced that Chief of Staff John Kelly will be stepping down by the end of the year. Kelly has arguably been fairly feckless in his discharge of his White House duties. But he has nonetheless often been regarded by pundits as “an adult in the ...

John Kelly Is a Present Danger to the Republic

Feature

Was it all futile?

Review: John Kelly’s ‘Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain’

July 14, 2018 • by Ian Birchall

Among the many moral panics aroused by Jeremy Corbyn's accession to the Labour leadership has been the return of the spectre of Trotskyism. Lord Hattersley has warned that ‘the old gang is back’, referring explicitly to the Militant grouping of the 1980s; Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has produced ‘evidence’ ...

Feature

Jeffrey C. Isaac, John McCain and Me

Thinking about a Democratic Antifa

October 27, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Isaac documents the danger that is White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. General Kelley’s disciplined authoritarianism may be more “adult” than that of his boss. Yet, as Isaac observes, it is enabling and not controlling the threat Trump presents to American democracy. Analyzing the interactive context of Trump’s telephone conversation with ...

Politics

Why Trump’s Words Were Offensive

Myeshia Johnson confirms Trump’s comments as hurtful and disrespectful

October 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Central to all of this was Kelly’s assertion that Trump’s words about Sgt. La David Johnson, the fallen soldier -- “he knew what he was getting into when he signed up” -- were appropriate words, which Kelly himself had been told by General Mo Dunsford when his own son was ...

Feature

John Kelly Is a Present Danger to the Republic

With all due respect

October 20, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Kelly spoke at length about the sacrifices of fallen soldiers, the duties of their military superiors, his own experiences as a commander and also as the father of a fallen soldier, and the advice he supposedly gave to Trump about how best to convey condolences to the families of fallen ...