Was General John Kelly Fired by Donald Trump? Timeline of the Relationship

The relationship between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff, is back in the spotlight.
On Tuesday, The Atlantic published an article alleging that while serving as president, Trump once told Kelly: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”
The account was attributed to “two people who heard him say this” and cited Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, who said the then-president expressed admiration for the loyalty of “Hitler’s generals.”
In a statement sent to Newsweek on Tuesday, Trump campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer said: “This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this.”
In a post Truth Social post last year, Trump called Kelly “the dumbest of my Military people,” adding that Kelly was “incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog.'”
Amid the controversy related to Trump’s reported remarks, some Trump supporters have resurfaced those claims on social media this week.
Kelly became the White House chief of staff on July 31, 2017, after his predecessor, Reince Priebus, resigned. This appointment aimed to bring more discipline and order to the White House, as Kelly had a reputation for being a strict and organized leader.
Kelly retired from the Marine Corps in January 2016 after more than 45 years of service. His last active-duty role was as the commander of U.S. Southern Command. At the time of his retirement, Kelly held the rank of General.
Before serving as Trump’s chief of staff, Kelly worked as the former president’s Secretary of Homeland Security for seven months, beginning in January 2017. In that role, he oversaw Trump’s efforts to construct a wall along the United States-Mexico border and was a key figure in the administration’s crackdown on immigration policy.
Kelly joked in 2018 that he wanted to keep his job running the Department of Homeland Security, but “God punished me” with a West Wing office.
“The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of Homeland Security, but I did something wrong, and God punished me, I guess,” Kelly quipped during an event celebrating the agency’s 15th anniversary, The Hill reported.
Kelly has been critical of Trump since leaving his administration.
In a statement to CNN last year, Kelly corroborated alleged statements by Trump which disparaged veterans, including calling them “suckers and losers,” that were reported in a 2020 story by The Atlantic.
In a response interview with CNN, Trump said, “John Kelly has an axe to grind, and he made up a story. Nobody would say what he said. I wouldn’t be the last person to say that he’s a liar; he’s a proven liar, and he’s lied on other occasions.”
He continued, “I didn’t respect him. Once I lost my respect for him because I saw that he couldn’t do the job, I fired him, and when you fire people, they tend to say negative things.”
In an interview last month with Shawn Ryan, a former Navy Seal and CIA contractor, Trump called Kelly “one of the dumbest people” he’s ever met.
When discussing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump went on to criticize Milley and then Kelly and said, “Guys like John Kelly, he’s one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. A bully, but a weak bully. You know, we just have some stupid people. Kelly wasn’t so involved in that, but we have some really stupid people at the top.”
Journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser said in their 2022 book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, that Trump had asked Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?”
When Kelly replied that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off,” Trump reportedly replied: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him.”
In Jeff Goldberg’s article for The Atlantic, Kelly gave an account of a “German generals” conversation with Trump. The chief of staff said he replied: “Do you mean [Otto von] Bismarck’s generals?
He added: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who [19th-century German Chancellor] Bismarck was or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the Kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that [field marshal Erwin] Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.”
In an interview with The New York Times published on Tuesday, Kelly said: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
Kelly also alleged that Trump had said, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung rejected the claims, saying in a statement to The New York Times that Kelly was spreading “debunked stories.”
Kelly was not formally fired; however, his departure from the White House came amid reports of significant tension and disagreements with Trump.
In December 2018, amid reports that Kelly would either be resigning or forced out, Trump confirmed that Kelly would be leaving “at the end of the year.”
The relationship between Trump and his ex-chief of staff had reportedly been soured for some time, becoming so poor that the two men no longer spoke to one another. It was also reported that Kelly spoke to special counsel Robert Mueller, answering a narrow set of questions on potential obstruction of justice committed by the president.
Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, left his position on January 2, 2019.
“John Kelly will be leaving, I don’t know if I can say retiring, but great guy,” Trump told reporters. “John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year. We will be announcing who will be taking John’s place; it might be on an interim basis.”
Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
Kelly has never formally identified himself with either the Republican or Democratic parties. However, given his roles in the Trump administration and alignment with certain policy areas, such as immigration, Kelly seems to lean toward Republican values despite his relatively neutral public stance.
Despite his staunch opposition to a second Trump term, Kelly has not directly endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign.