On Monday, it was reported that Donald Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly regularly refers to Donald Trump as an "idiot."
Last night Donald Trump tried to swat down that report with tweets of solidarity:
Also, John Kelly released his own statement calling the report "total BS."
But the report is certainly nothing new. There is a long history of Trump's own close officials calling him a variety of insults and NBC News decided to put them all in one place on the air on Tuesday, with what anchor Hallie Jackson called their "insult list."
NBC news screenshot (NBC)
The insults cited include:
"An idiot" - John Kelly, Chief of Staff
"F***ing moron" - Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
A "dope"...intelligence of a "kindergartener" - H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor
Dumb as s***" - Gary Cohn, Chief Economic Advisor
"Idiot" - Reince Priebus, Chief of Staff
As Jackson noted:
"If you notice, none of them work for Donald Trump anymore except for John Kelly."
Which could lend credence to the rumor that Kelly may be leaving the White House as soon as this summer.
Meanwhile, plenty of people have picked up on the story on the president's favorite social media site, Twitter. The number of Tweets repeating the string of insults cannot sit well with Trump.
Many speculated that the stories about Kelly's insults are a deliberate ploy by other members of Trump's staff intended to get the retired general fired like several of his predecessors who also reportedly insulted Trump.
One person even went so far as to create a trivia poll about the insults allegedly hurled at the president by his own staff.
