THE recent media blitz led by former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly as it attempted to link former President Trump to Adolf Hitler, certainly got a lot of attention.

I guess that’s what media blitzes are for.

And I imagine the Kamala Harris campaign is very happy with Kelly’s participation in their final argument in the 2024 race.

I will leave politics to others.

I see Kelly’s comments from a different perspective – as one of three other people in the entire world who have roughly the same view on the Trump White House as General Kelly.

From that perspective, I was shocked and disappointed by the course of action he chose to take.

I wasn’t surprised though.

His recent behavior is simply consistent with what many of us have seen in the White House during Kelly’s tenure.

Kelly has always viewed the role we share, that of White House chief of staff, differently than I do.

We both knew we were the only ones in the West Wing whose job it was to tell the President things he didn’t want to hear.

But the similarities end there.

I viewed this role as one that would enable the president to be as successful as possible in carrying out the agenda that led to his being elected.

Kelly viewed the job as that of a self-appointed overseerresponsible for protecting the country against a president that these same people had elected.

I saw the role of chief of staff.

Kelly considered him the president’s boss.

There are of course limits to what this work entails.

Faithful service never involves doing things that are illegal or immoral or in violation of our oaths to the Constitution.

But Kelly didn’t say Trump asked him to do anything like that.

His objections seem linked to Trump’s alleged tendencies and inclinations.

Kelly’s main goal now appears to be to link Trump to Hitler, using the former president’s own words to do so.

Oddly enough, absolutely no one else seems to remember comments similar to those alleged by Kelly.

Donald Trump certainly I never spoke favorably about Adolph Hitler, which seems consistent to me with his daughter and grandchildren being Jewish.

Indeed, he never mentioned the man — not to me, nor to any of the dozens of aides I’ve communicated with since Kelly went public.

It is true that former national security adviser John Bolton responded to Kelly’s accusations by saying, “If John said them, I believe them implicitly.” »

This is probably not surprising, given Bolton’s very public antipathy towards his former boss.

Bolton’s contribution makes one thing clear: he has never heard similar comments.

Trump also never asked me to do anything illegal or immoral.

He never gave me any reason to believe, as Kelly claims, that he was a fascist.

If he had done any of these things, I would have responded in the only acceptable way: by doing my best to convince him to do or be otherwise.

Otherwise, I would have resigned from my position.

Kelly, if he had heard such disturbing comments, should have done the same.

But he didn’t do it.

He remained in office, it is suggested, for the extra-constitutional purpose of “stopping” the president from doing things the general did not approve of.

Then, the most telling part is that Kelly remained silent for five and a half years, hiding his secrets about Trump’s alleged fascist tendencies, only to reveal them in what appears to be a coordinated media barrage a fortnight before the 2024 election.

One of Kelly’s current claims is that Trump does not respect the outcome of the election.

Yet if the general thinks that the role of the White House chief of staff is to serve as “protection” against the president, then he is he who is willing to ignore the wishes of the more than 60 million people who voted for Trump in 2016.

Exactly none of them voted for Kelly.

General Kelly has been a loyal servant of the United States military for over 40 years.

Most importantly, perhaps, he is a Gold Star father.

He gave more to this nation than I could ever wish for.

But he’s proof that Trump Derangement Syndrome knows no limits.

Americans have come to expect as much from politicians, most media outlets, and political activists.

We deserve more from a White House chief of staff.

Mick Mulvaney, White House chief of staff under President Trump, contributes to NewsNation.