# John Kelly Retired Marine four-star general (b. 1950), the first Trump administration's Secretary of Homeland Security (January–July 2017) and White House Chief of Staff (July 2017–January 2019), and since 2024 the most senior former official to say in public that [[Donald Trump]] meets the definition of a fascist. A Boston-born enlisted Marine turned officer, he commanded in Iraq and led Southern Command; his son Robert was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, which is the fact behind most of his later collisions with the President. ## In the administration At DHS he implemented the first travel ban and defended the border agenda; it was Kelly who, in March 2017, first floated separating children from parents at the border as a deterrent, the policy his successor [[Kirstjen Nielsen]] carried out ([[Family Separation Policy]]). As chief of staff he was brought in to impose order on the West Wing and did, for a while — restricting access, controlling paper — while becoming the administration's public defender in episodes he later regretted, including his October 2017 attack on Rep. Frederica Wilson over the President's condolence call to a Gold Star widow. He left in January 2019 after eighteen months of reported friction; by his own later account, he had spent the time trying to keep the President inside the law. ## After Kelly stayed quiet through 2020, then confirmed on the record the *Atlantic*'s reporting that Trump had called fallen soldiers "suckers" and "losers" and had not wanted to be seen with wounded veterans ([[Jeffrey Goldberg]], [[The Atlantic]]). In October 2024, two weeks before the election, he told the *New York Times* and the *Atlantic* that Trump had said "Hitler did some good things," had wished for "the kind of generals that Hitler had," and "certainly falls into the general definition of fascist" — a former chief of staff describing his former principal in the terms the vault's [[Fascism]] page uses. Trump called him a "lowlife" and a "bully"; the campaign disputed every quotation; [[Adolf Hitler]] comparisons became, for the last fortnight of the race, a mainstream-media question rather than a fringe one. Kelly holds no role in the second term. He belongs beside the other retired officers who broke ranks — the [[Civil-Military Relations]] page's core problem is what it means when the generals are the ones sounding the alarm. ## See Also - [[Donald Trump]] · [[Kirstjen Nielsen]] · [[Family Separation Policy]] · [[Department of Homeland Security]] - [[Jeffrey Goldberg]] · [[The Atlantic]] · [[Fascism]] · [[Adolf Hitler]] · [[Civil-Military Relations]]