Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said he would have “probably” taken the same job if Democrat Hillary Clinton had defeated President Trump in the 2016 election and asked him to fill the role.
“If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, and she had called me and said ‘I really need a good chief of staff here,’ I’d have probably done it,” Kelly said Wednesday during an event at Duke University.
“Politics aside, it’s all about governing the country,” the retired four-star general said, according to audio obtained by ABC News.
Kelly, who became White House chief of staff in July 2017, characterized his time in the White House as “the least enjoyable job I’ve ever had.”
“But it was he most important job I’ve ever had,” he added.
Kelly, 68, announced in December he would exit the White House at the end of 2018 and was replaced by Mick Mulvaney, who is serving simultaneously as acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget. When asked what advice he would give Mulvaney, Kelly joked that Mulvaney should “run for it” before stating seriously that Mulvaney should tell Trump “what he needs to hear.”
Before joining the White House to replace Reince Priebus, Kelly served as the head of the Homeland Security Department.
