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For inner circle appointed military to confirm these comments by trump speaks volumes.
John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.
Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.
“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.”
In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015 that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”
CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.
The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to several senior staff members, Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.
And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”
“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”
“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic, a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.
That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”
Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”
“Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story. Griffin issued a statement to The Atlantic after that story posted denying the report.
Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”
No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”
Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”
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But but but….The Clinton’s and the Biden’s?
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
– Jackie Robinson
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How anyone who has ever served in the military or is related to anyone who has served in the military could vote for this POS is beyond me.
Joe Thomas #73
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You would certainly think that.
I mean anyone who served or had family who served. How could you read that coming from a General who was appointed by trump.
Then add his comments about General Milley another appointee who trump said should be executed for treason.
Hard to fathom that he could get one vote.
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Legend
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Authoritarian fascism: It’s like a sickness that won’t quit spreading on the right. Built entirely on a foundation of lies, the MAGA cult is devout in proliferating that garbage. I’m not sure this country is even fixable, anymore. Re-education centers? I mean for a party that used to claim the moral high ground, they sure have fallen. And many I hear speak the trumpian lies are so clueless it’s disgusting, yet they will spread trumpian hate, lies, conspiracy theories, and propaganda like it’s gospel handed down directly from god. What are you supposed to do with that in a modern democracy? Can’t round them all up, can’t put them all down, can’t hate them all for being hoodwinked, yet can’t really let it continue to harm the country. Nothing embarrasses them. Nothing quells them. No facts can penetrate their bubbles. I can’t tell you how many people that I used to respect, that have become shells of the people they used to be. The shear ignorance it takes to swallow some of Trumps lies is mind boggling, yet here we are.
Last edited by OldColdDawg; 10/03/23 01:45 PM.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
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Legend
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That's the same thing Putin is using on the children from Ukraine he has kidnapped.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
#gmstrong
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How anyone who has ever served in the military or is related to anyone who has served in the military could vote for this POS is beyond me. There are all kinds in the military. Kind of like police forces. Plenty of self centered racists that like to play with guns. Unfortunately, they're not all there for noble self-sacrifice.
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/fkjZc8B/Bull-Dawg-Sig-smaller.jpg) You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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But then again if people are being honest, you will find a diversity just as wide among any large group of people. That's why I do my best not to use the actions and words of some people within a group to define an entire group.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
#gmstrong
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I agree with you.
At the same time, I have a "theory" that groups have a tendency to pull their members down towards a "lowest common denominator" rather than raising them to be better. I suppose it depends on the group. Unfortunately, political parties would seem to fit that theoretical framework.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Well it’s easy to say that now. The more difficult thing to do would have been to resign and state why back then.
This is nothing new.
There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.
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Legend
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Imagine being Kelly and slowly realizing who he worked for… Disgusting. And he was basically trapped. What a way to end your career. Serving the LOSER and Chief.
Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
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Imagine being Kelly and slowly realizing who he worked for… Disgusting. And he was basically trapped. What a way to end your career. Serving the LOSER and Chief. I'm definitely glad I got out when I did. It's not too hard to imagine.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Legend
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Well it’s easy to say that now. The more difficult thing to do would have been to resign and state why back then.
This is nothing new. Isn't that essentially what Mattis did?
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
-PrplPplEater
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Legend
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The thing that bugs the stuffing out of me is that these people are supposed to be smart..
I recognize that I am not as smart as them.. Yet, I knew immediately that Trump was all the wacko things that we now know for sure that he is.
why would they join his administration?
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe."
Damanshot
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Hard to limit the damage from the outside.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Legend
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From one former 45 administration member to the next, there is an ever-lengthening parade line of people who describe their time in the 45 office in similar terms.
A growing number of them are adding their voices to the chorus with candid, detailed depictions of their interactions with him. There is a startling consistency in the pictures they paint. And it comes as no surprise to me that along with their stories comes this universal admonition: "I saw him up close. He really is a danger."
Bill Barr
Chris Christie
John Bolton
All the military brass
Cassidy Hutchinson
[insert names I've forgotten here]
Point: these folks signed on willingly. They were Team 45 from Day One, and ready to go. Then, they actually saw what they'd signed onto, and came to the same conclusions. Each had his/her own unique interactions, but ALL came away with the same conclusion.
And now, they are telling The American Public.
If you ask me, The American Public should listen to them.
If the people who knew him most intimately are telling us all to politically jettison this man into the vacuum of interstellar space, why would we not listen to them?
_____________________
I'd like to make one other observation here before I go. All of the stuff being discussed in this and many other threads happened within the span of only four years. Let that soak in and marinate for a moment. Never before in my lifetime has so much crazy been shoved in my face on a daily basis. The closest I can come is Viet Nam/Nixon/Watergate but that's a very distant second place to what we're experiencing now. I believe that we, as a collective society, have allowed ourselves to let Crazy of All Sorts become our new normal. All of it is shocking... and yet, none of it is surprising any more.
How sad for us, that we've abdicated our responsibilities for clear thought and rational action. It has made us numb...
to the Indefensible,
Reprehensible,
Anti-sensible...
...and just plain dumb.
.02/out.
"too many notes, not enough music-"
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Legend
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For those who watched the hearings it was all inner circle appointed GOP.
That's what partisan politics is about. Follow the party right over the cliff.
I really do not care about one party or the other. I want the person to be sensible and apply common sense. Do what is right for the good of all.
Apply logic to policy that helps the people and the country.
Right now there is a line in the sand and nothing is getting done.
trump pure and simple is a wanna be dictator. His every action screams that. The GOP just puts cotton in their ears.
These Generals have seen first hand the real danger trump represents.
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While what they are saying about Trump rings true, the fact that they waited until now still kind of rubs me the wrong way. Maybe they wanted to still be able to rein in his worse tendencies in case he was reelected, but that rings a little hollow and there is a whiff of political expediency in their denunciation now.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Legend
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I don't know. Since trump has a huge lead in every poll there is to become the next nominee to run for president I would consider what they're saying as being closer to political suicide than political expediency.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
#gmstrong
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I would imagine that it would be difficult to find people to fill top positions in a second Trump administration.
There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.
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1. Happy birthday!
2. I don't think it'll be difficult per se. I think the quality will just go from bad to worse to beyond worse.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
#gmstrong
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I would imagine that it would be difficult to find people to fill top positions in a second Trump administration. Every cult leader has a following of sycophants, toadies, and yes men. donny would have no problems filling roles with the highly incompetent among the previously stated groups. Plus Jared, I’m sure, would love another multi billion dollar bribe from the Saudi’s. donnys family will surely be there to fill their coffers again through appointments they have no capacity for. bUt HuNtEr
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Legend
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Hard to limit the damage from the outside. and yet, there was still a ton of Damage.,
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe."
Damanshot
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Hard to limit the damage from the outside. and yet, there was still a ton of Damage., Just think. It could have been worse. ...somehow.... Honestly, with that guy, it's not that hard to imagine.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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I don't know. Since trump has a huge lead in every poll there is to become the next nominee to run for president I would consider what they're saying as being closer to political suicide than political expediency. Only if you believe Trump is actually going to win, and I'm not just talking about the nomination.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Legend
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Legend
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I don't know. Since trump has a huge lead in every poll there is to become the next nominee to run for president I would consider what they're saying as being closer to political suicide than political expediency. Only if you believe Trump is actually going to win, and I'm not just talking about the nomination. I didn't think he would win the first time. I didn't think that even three years later after the 2020 election he would be spreading the lies of a stolen election. I didn't believe that the majority of Republicans would still believe him after losing over 60 court cases, the SCOTUS which he had picked three members of would refuse to hear his arguments twice due to lack of merit and they would still believe him. I didn't think I would ever see anything like Jan. 6th. And as far as imaging. I can't imagine what will happen if he loses again and his sycophants are told yet again that their country has been stolen from them. It may cause Jan. 6th look like a day at the playground. I've learned that when it comes to trump, I should no longer have preconceived notions about what to believe, expect or imagine. I think we're in for a nightmare whether he wins or not.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
#gmstrong
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I don't know. Since trump has a huge lead in every poll there is to become the next nominee to run for president I would consider what they're saying as being closer to political suicide than political expediency. Only if you believe Trump is actually going to win, and I'm not just talking about the nomination. I didn't think he would win the first time. I didn't think that even three years later after the 2020 election he would be spreading the lies of a stolen election. I didn't believe that the majority of Republicans would still believe him after losing over 60 court cases, the SCOTUS which he had picked three members of would refuse to hear his arguments twice due to lack of merit and they would still believe him. I didn't think I would ever see anything like Jan. 6th. And as far as imaging. I can't imagine what will happen if he loses again and his sycophants are told yet again that their country has been stolen from them. It may cause Jan. 6th look like a day at the playground. I've learned that when it comes to trump, I should no longer have preconceived notions about what to believe, expect or imagine. I think we're in for a nightmare whether he wins or not. I don't disagree. I was more trying to reference what the people speaking out believe than you personally, though. I wasn't as clear as I could have been.
You mess with the "Bull," you get the horns. Fiercely Independent.
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Legend
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I was unsure if Biden or trump would run.
I wonder if Biden would run if trump had not decided to run?
The fact that trump has continued with his bs about a stolen election after the court cases. Is more about him refusing to say he lost.
Now with 91 indictments, sexual assault conviction, and fraud civil case judgement. It is all about trump gaining power to basically make him above the law.
Those who refuse to see that are promoting that result.
It is a real danger to the fabric of democracy. It could ruin this country.
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