JOHN KELLY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “When President Trump learned this week that his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, reportedly called him ‘an idiot’ on several occasions, he expressed little in the way of frustration or anger, an uncharacteristically low-key response from someone with little tolerance for slights. Attending a fund-raising dinner on Monday [4-30-18], Mr. Trump told a confidant that he did not believe Mr. Kelly would say something like that, a point he made directly to Mr. Kelly in the Oval Office not long after the comment was reported. It was ‘fake news,’ the president concluded, an assessment that he repeated in a pair of tweets. Many current and former officials said Mr. Trump’s response was less a vote of confidence in his top adviser than a sign of indifference — a reflection of the kind of cold truce that exists between two powerful and mercurial men who have grown tired and irritated with each other, but are in no immediate rush to part ways.”
-Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman, “Kelly Finds Himself in a Familiar Place in the Trump White House: Eyeing the Exits,” The New York Times online, May 2, 2018