WASHINGTON _ When retired Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly took the job of White House chief of staff, he was widely perceived as a kind of monitor of the erratic behavior of President Trump.
Overnight, however, Kelly has allowed himself, or has elected on his own, to assume an entirely different role. In stepping forward as a defender of Trump's controversial condolence phone call to the widow of fallen Army Sgt. La David Johnson in Niger, Flynn has donned a political and partisan hat.
By marching into the White House press room last week and assailing Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida for listening in on the call and criticizing Trump for it, Flynn risked his reputation as an honest broker in curbing the president's excesses.
Now, wittingly or not, he has signed on as part of Trump's war on the American press. He has been eagerly joined by the latest White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who later insisted it was "highly inappropriate" for a duly accredited reporter "to get into debate with a four-star Marine general" over Wilson's version of the story.
Flynn, in his understandable desire not to have the slain soldier's sacrifice lost in the whole affair, has inserted himself into unfamiliar terrain. He said twice that he would take questions only from reporters who were Gold Star parents or siblings of the deceased or who knew a Gold Star family. Such a caveat clearly is outside the bounds of a functioning free press.
Flynn up to now has been seen and admired as a self-disciplined military man who by his own demeanor and career training knew to leave politics to the politicians. His public life has been marked by acceptance if not reverence toward civilian leadership in the realm of national governance.
But in this instance, he not only attacked an elected legislator but was also guilty of the worst offense in press relations, by being demonstrably wrong on the facts. He accused Rep. Wilson of grandstanding by claiming credit for the funding of a new FBI building in Miami that Congress authorized before she was a House member.
The reporter who questioned Kelly respectfully and reasonably asked him about the mission in which Johnson and three colleagues were killed in Niger in October 2017. The general replied only that the whole matter was being investigated within the military, the only positive outcome so far.
Kelly also revealed that he had advised Trump not to phone the family member in question but rather to follow the usual presidential procedure of writing a condolence letter. In fact, in advising Trump on what to say if he did call, Kelly said he offered basically the same words that were taken by the bereaved as offensive _ that the Sgt. Johnson knew what he was getting into as an enlistee in time of war.
Coming from the often-blunt Trump, it may well have come across harsher than intended. In any event, the whole matter required defter handling than it received. Kelly's original counsel against Trump making the phone call probably would have been the better course all around, considering his propensity for giving offense with his off-the cuff remarks.
After months of limiting his role in the Trump administration to being a background adviser, Kelly has suddenly stepped out front in defense of the president, engaging himself as a combatant on what has suddenly become a political battlefield.
His public credibility, as a constructive moderating force in trying to keep Trump functioning as effectively as possible within the normal bounds of governance, unfortunately is imperiled now.
The president already has enough spokespersons in a notoriously hostile anti-press communications shop, first under the thin-skinned and combustible Sean Spicer and now run by the acid and combative Sanders, to keep the pot boiling in his fake-news assault on the fourth estate.
Admittedly, within the Trump administration it must be difficult to preserve one's own sense of integrity working under a president largely bereft of any himself. But that is the price Kelly apparently must pay, not matter how well-meaning he is in so serving.
