John Kelly blames Trump for White House chaos in off-the-record meeting
President Donald Trump (left) and WH chief of staff John Kelly (right). Image via Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP.

White House chief of staff John Kelly acknowledged that President Donald Trump is the source of much of the chaos in the West Wing in an off-the-record meeting with reporters Friday.


Axios, who was not at the meeting but spoke to three sources close to it, reported that Kelly relayed that "it’s likely that Trump is talking to people outside the White House and that reporters are then talking to those people."

When discussing news of both actual and speculative cabinet shake-ups over the past week, Kelly "cast Trump’s own conversations as a significant contributing factor."

The remarks were made less than a day after news broke that the president may remove national security adviser H.R. McMaster from office and a few days following Trump's announcement via tweet that he is replacing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.