John Kelly Confirms Trump Despises The Troops Exactly As Much As We Thought
Let's jot down some reminders of who exactly Trump is, in case the media has forgotten.
It’s not getting enough attention from the mainstream news media that Donald Trump recently called for Mark Milley, the very recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be executed. There are a number of articles out there about how instead, the media has been spending stupid amounts of time on breaking news stories like “Joe Biden is old” and “Joe Biden wears tennis shoes” and, our personal favorite right now, “Joe Biden’s dog bites Secret Service agents but nobody else.”
(A good place to start in this genre is Brian Klaas’s newsletter on “the banality of crazy,” and his “case for amplifying Trump’s insanity,” which Charlie Sykes highlighted yesterday.)
So to emphasize it again: Donald Trump called for the execution of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And as we have seen, when Trump calls for violence, he sometimes gets it. It is not normal. It is not banal. And it is far more important than a German shepherd who thinks all cops are bastards.
Trump also recently gleefully, maniacally told his pigfuck fascist followers that when he’s president again, he’s going to direct cops to execute shoplifters.
And we’re sure he’ll probably soon be on Truth Social inciting hatred against his former chief of staff John Kelly, because Kelly just went on record in an interview with Jake Tapper and confirmed stories we’ve heard in the past — particularly from that 2020 expose in The Atlantic from Jeffrey Goldberg — about exactly how much contempt Trump has for the US military.
Here is a big huge quote from John Kelly:
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”
Well, that seems pretty clear.
If you had forgotten any of those stories, it’s probably because Joe Biden coughed and the press had to spend 48 hours talking to medical experts about whether that meant he had already died. But indeed, Trump didn’t want to go to the Aisne-Marne American cemetery in Paris because first of all, he was scared of getting his hair wet, and because it was filled with “losers.” He thought the 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood were “suckers.”
He hated John McCain for his service and he displayed open contempt for Ghizr and Khazala Khan, the Gold Star parents who dared to speak out against him during the 2016 campaign.
He was openly confused about “what was in it for them” at the grave of Robert Kelly, son of John Kelly, who was killed in Afghanistan, and this was something he said to Kelly’s face.
He’s grossed out being around amputees and others injured in war, which Stephanie Winston Wolkoff reported in her book several years back, and which Jeffrey Goldberg reported in his recent Atlantic story about Mark Milley. We’ll copy/paste all of that one, in case you didn’t see it because the press was busy making listicles of the Top 10 Times Joe Biden Was Maybe About To Trip But Then He Didn’t.
At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.
It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Hollyanne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley. (Recently, Milley invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.)
That, on top of everything else, is who Donald Trump is.
As Kelly notes in his statement, Trump calling for the execution of Milley was said “in expectation that someone will take action.” Then he added that Trump is “[a] person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” In his own retirement speech, Milley referred to Trump, though not by name, as a “tyrant or dictator or wannabe dictator.”
Trump is a fraudster and conman who’s under 91 felony indictments, many of which stem from his theft and concealment of America’s secrets, and his efforts to overthrow the Republic and overturn an election because he’s too sensitive to admit he lost.
He’s on trial for the constant fraud in New York.
According to a judge, he’s a rapist.
And as Doyle McManus spelled out recently in the LA Times, this, per his own words, is what Trump wants to do if he’s president again:
Use the military to participate in the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in American history;
Order the National Guard into cities with high crime rates, whether local officials want it or not;
Prosecute Californians who protect minors coming to the state for gender-affirming care;
Impose a 10% tariff on almost all foreign goods, increasing prices for consumers;
Appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” his political opponents, beginning with Biden;
Purge the federal civil service of anyone who questions his views.
But hey, sometimes Joe Biden is almost FOUR FULL YEARS older than Donald Trump and sometimes Joe Biden says the wrong word and we’re pretty sure Jill Biden’s cat called a Secret Service agent a “cunt” the other day, and not in the British way, or maybe it was just a really weird meow, but the media should definitely look into all of that.
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
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My 80-year-old mother, who is usually pretty vocal about politicians but never to the point of saying anything that would involve a profanity or a "with votes" caveat, recently told me point blank "I wish that orange fuck would just die and go straight to hell where he belongs."
One does not argue with such wisdom from their elders.
We're a proud gold star family. My father was KIA in 1968. 60% of America, and 90% of the planet have been disgusted by trump for various reasons - racism, antisemitism, general criminality... the list goes on.
Him calling our war dead suckers and losers was especially difficult for us. Not so much his vile but hardly unsurprising comments, but allegedly pro-military MAGAs' utter lack of outrage. Still, what else should we have expected?
We have family that are MAGAs. My father's brother is still a trumper, even after trump mocked his own brother's death. The cult is real. We've chosen not to engage with this wing of the family any more. They've never met my little boy. When he's old enough to make his own decisions on that he can. My son has lots of friends and a loving extended family - so fuck the traitors in my own family. Just fuck 'em.