In October 2017, John F. Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump, argued that "the lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War." He also described Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man" who "gave up... his country to fight for his state," and claimed that "men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand." In response to the ensuing controversy, the White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited the work of Foote in defense of Kelly: "I do know that many historians, including Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' famous Civil War documentary, agreed that a failure to compromise was a cause of the Civil War."