The Knives Are Out for John Kelly

The days of White House Chief of Staff and very bad man John Kelly appear to be numbered.

Despite Kelly’s public insistence that his handling of the ongoing scandal regarding accused wife beater and former top Trump aide Rob Porter was “all done right,” his credibility among White House staffers seems to be in free-fall, with administration officials feeling hilariously free to trash their current boss in the press.

Kelly is “a big fat liar,” one official who declined to be identified (go figure) told the Washington Post. “To put it in terms the general would understand, his handling of the Porter scandal amounts to dereliction of duty.”

The former Homeland Security secretary—whom White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders continued to insist has the “confidence” of President Trump—reportedly stunned White House staffers by essentially asking them to lie in order to cover for the administration’s nauseating behavior when it came to Porter. His reputation has only gotten worse following FBI Director Chris Wray’s public detonation of the administration’s official timeline about when it first learned about Porter’s alleged abuse.

Kelly himself reportedly signaled a willingness to step down in the early days of the Porter scandal—well before Wray’s damning testimony. On Tuesday evening, Republican officials reportedly agreed that Kelly’s tenure was nearing an end, and suggested Trump might name chief economic adviser Gary Cohn as his replacement.

This isn’t to say Kelly is absolutely a goner. But it’s clear that the schemers in the Trump administration smell blood in the water.