White House Chief of Staff John Kelly also apparently wants to know what Jared and Ivanka do all day

John Kelly &quot;jokes&quot; about working in the White House

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/CNN)

published 2 March 2018

One of the battles reportedly raging inside the chaotic White House is between Chief of Staff John Kelly and President Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. "Javanka and Kelly are locked in a death match," a White House official told Axios, using Stephen Bannon's celebrity couple name for Trump's senior advisers/children. "Two enter. Only one survives."

Ivanka Trump and Kushner "have been frustrated by Kelly's attempt to restrict their access to the president, and they perceive his new crackdown on clearances as a direct shot at them," The Associated Press reports, citing White House aides and outside advisers, and the frustration is apparently mutual: Kelly "blames them for changing Trump's mind at the last minute and questions what exactly they do all day, according to one White House official and an outside ally."

To be fair, Kushner has been put in charge of solving a monstrous heap of issues, but is mostly supposed to focus on forging Israeli-Palestinian peace, while Ivanka has been known to represent her father at international conferences and the Olympics, as well as push for tax cuts for parents of young children. "Allies of Kushner and Ivanka Trump insist they have no plans to leave the White House in the near future," AP notes, but Kelly's continued tenure is an open question. "The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of homeland security," Kelly said Thursday, at the Homeland Security Department's 15th birthday celebration. "But I did something wrong and God punished me, I guess."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.