Ex-chief of staff John Kelly said if Trump was a ‘real man’ he would’ve gone to the Capitol on January 6 to stop the rioters: book

John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, did not mince words about his ex-boss as rioters violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, according to a new book.

“If he was a real man, he would go down to the Capitol and tell them to stop,” Kelly said of Trump to ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl during a phone call as the insurrection was taking place.

The conversation comes in Karl’s forthcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” which will be published Tuesday. Insider obtained an early copy of the book.

Kelly added that he believed the riot — led by Trump supporters while Congress met to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win — was enough to invoke the 25th Amendment, a process to remove a president unable to fulfill their duties.

“If I was still there, I would call the cabinet and start talking about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment,” Kelly told Karl, referring to the ability of the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet members to remove a president from office. Despite bipartisan calls to remove Trump at the time, then-Vice President Mike Pence opposed the effort.

Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, served as Trump’s second chief of staff from mid-2017 to early 2019. Since his departure from the Trump administration, Kelly has been critical of Trump at times. In the aftermath of the insurrection, Kelly said that Americans needs to “look infinitely harder at who we elect” as president in the future.