Chief of Staff Grew Concerned About Donald Trump's Mental Health Early in His Presidency: Book

Mike Theiler-Pool/Getty John Kelly (left), Donald Trump

Donald Trump's own chief of staff was reportedly so worried by the former president's erratic behavior in office that he purchased a book warning about his boss's mental health.

That's according to the forthcoming book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, which debuts Tuesday and has been excerpted by numerous media outlets in recent days.

In one passage, journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that John Kelly — who served as Trump's chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019 — secretly purchased a copy of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book in which mental health experts warn against electing Trump as president, in the administration's first year.

In an excerpt of the book shared by The Guardian, Baker and Glasser write that Kelly purchased the book "to understand the president's particular psychoses and consulted it while he was running the White House, which he was known to refer to as 'Crazytown.'"

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According to The Divider, "Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person."

The authors also quote an unnamed senior official who seemingly shares the view that the former president has a mental health issue.

"I think there's something wrong with [Trump]," the person is quoted as saying to the authors. "He doesn't listen to anybody, and he feels like he shouldn't. He just doesn't care what other people say and think. I've never seen anything like it."

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Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, has occasionally voiced his views about Trump since leaving the administration in early 2019.

In 2020, Kelly made headlines when he suggested that Trump was not the right man for the job, saying: "I think we really need to step back. I think we need to look harder at who we elect ... What is their character like? What are their ethics? Are they willing, if they're elected, to represent all of their constituents, not just the base, but all of their constituents? And then look at the politics."

Trump, meanwhile, has taken aim at Kelly for those remarks, saying the former chief of staff "was not in my inner-circle, was totally exhausted by the job, and in the end just slinked away into obscurity."

Trump has repeatedly criticized Kelly since he left the White House. After Kelly defended Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Trump said the former chief of staff "was not in my inner-circle, was totally exhausted by the job, and in the end just slinked away into obscurity."

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Kelly has said that, despite Trump's open flirtation with launching another run for the presidency in 2024, he does not personally believe it will happen.

"He'll continue talking about it; he may even declare, but he will not run," Kelly said last year. "And the reason is he simply cannot be seen as a loser."