The "maneuvers" of God
Kelly served previously, as commanding general of the Multiple-West Force in Iraq, for one year and as commander of the Marine Reserve Force and Marine Forces of the Northern Marines in October 2009.Kelly was the successor of General Douglas M. Fraser as commander of Southern Command of the United States in November 2012. On December 7, 2016, President Donald Trump announced the appointment of Kelly as the fifth United States Secretary of Homeland Security with the responsibility of overseeing the maintenance of borders and combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking and the terrorism.
Eight years ago, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, one of his sons, dies at the age of 29 in action because of a landmine patrolling with the Marines in Sangin, Afghanistan. The death of his son made John Kelly the most senior soldier who has lost a child in Iraq or Afghanistan.
John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, told reporters jokingly that God "punished" him when he stopped being National Security Secretary in the middle of last year to become the president's right-hand man. Kelly noted the great affection he has for the Department of Homeland Security and how much he liked to lead it for six months, from January to July 2017, and he emphasized it in an act to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of that agency.
According to Kelly, the last thing he wanted to do was to get away from one of the great honors of his life, which was to be the Secretary of Homeland Security, he misses his work every day. The chief of staff seemed to be joking and the audience reacted with laughter, however, his comments are said in a context where, according to press reports, the relationship with President Trump and with his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has been affected.
The retired general, who was leading the Southern Command for four years and therefore knows Latin America well, was chosen by Trump last July as chief of staff with the mission of printing discipline to a White House marked by chaos and power struggles.Last October, Kelly acknowledged that his work in the White House was "the most difficult" he had ever done, and in recent weeks speculation has rekindled that the general could resign or be fired from his job.His relationship with Trump seems to have weakened after Kelly declared in January that the president was not "fully informed" by making some campaign promises in 2016; and the support he offered to Rob Porter, a former White House official accused of mistreatment, damaged his reputation in Washington.
If we add that his relationship with Kushner has been strained due to his decision to reduce from "top secret" to "secret" the access permission to confidential information of Trump's son-in-law.In his speech at the Department of Homeland Security, Kelly said he would like to "have worked harder" during the six months he spent in that agency, thus protecting the men and women employed there, who are beaten hard every day by his management of security and immigration in the United States.
