Nobody's Pitted Gen. John Kelly, that national disgrace? Allow me, then.

The BBQ Pit
#1

I assume everyone knows about Kelly’s remarks the other day defending his boss, the Orange Abomination, and attacking Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. So I’ll just launch in.

  1. Whatever Trump actually said in his call to Myeshia Johnson, and however he may have said it, the upshot is that Ms. Johnson was clearly hurt rather than comforted by the call. Once that was known, the White House’s first priority should have been to rectify that. Gen. Kelly didn’t give a damn about that. Fuck him for that.

  2. One of the things that clearly riled Kelly the most was that Rep. Wilson supposedly violated the ‘sacredness’ of the privacy of the call between Trump and Ms. Johnson. And how did that supposedly happen? Neither Ms. Johnson, nor Sgt. Johnson’s mother, nor Rep. Wilson, had any control over the phone at their end. The phone was in the hands of an Army sergeant, who put the phone on speaker.

So clearly the alleged privacy of the call broke down on the government’s end. If there was a pre-call, the sergeant should have let the staffer at the White House end know who was in the car with Ms. Johnson. If there was no pre-call, then given that the sergeant’s maintaining control of the phone required that the call be put on speaker, the White House was taking its chances on who might be in the car. And certainly there was no ‘sacredness’ concerning who might accompany Ms. Johnson in the car on her way to receive her husband’s casket.

Kelly had to know much of this, especially given that his ostensible subject was what happens when a soldier is killed in action.

  1. Rep. Wilson was present as a friend of the family, and as a woman who’d mentored Sgt. Johnson, not just as a Congresswoman. Kelly had to know this, it was in all the news accounts, but he chose to ignore this.

In general, he completely distorted Rep. Wilson’s role in the conversation in a way that amounted to a slander of her. Fuck him for this.

  1. He reached back to an incident in 2015 involving Rep. Wilson, and fabricated a story about her at that incident to further slander her. Fuck him for this too.

  2. Fuck him for everything he thinks used to be sacred, but isn’t any more. Women used to be sacred? Only to the extent that they were put on a pedestal to deny them agency. The dignity of life used to be sacred? Lynchings were still a thing when he was in high school. Religion used to be sacred? Well, if you’re gonna be all about the sacredness of things of this world, you’re not the right person to speak of the sacredness of the things of God.

  3. Especially his implication that the Khan family’s presence at the Democratic convention last year somehow diminished the ‘sacredness’ of Gold Star families. Dafuq?! Meanwhile of course, his disregard for the immediate Gold Star family of Sgt. Johnson is palpable, as he ignores their hurt, and adds to it by slandering their friend. Fuck him with a chainsaw. His actions here demonstrate that he doesn’t give a damn about Gold Star families.

  4. And fuck the notion that the military and those connected with them are somehow better than the rest of us. Members of the military “volunteer to protect our country when there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate, but required”? They’re “the best 1 percent this country produces”? Only Gold Star family members, or people who know them, have the right to ask him any questions? And of course, this:

Yeah, sure you don’t look down on the rest of us. You’re just a little bit sorry for us, that we haven’t been like you. Uhhuh.

No, you’re not better than the rest of us. Ranking military service as a superior vocation is the stuff of fascism, not democracy. Those in uniform are no better or worse than the rest of us. And John Kelly, who I will no longer honor with a military rank, you, personally, are far worse than the rest of us for saying such things. Someone else can play your role of keeping Trump’s hands off the nuclear football. Kindly get the fuck out of public life and take a vow of silence. You are a disgrace to America.

#2

AAA++ pitting! Good to have it all in one place.

#3

I long ago started rating Jarheads on a case-by-case basis. Saying, “Thank you for your service,” is usually good for a round or two on them." More? I’ve left the bar by then. One can’t expect miracles from the guys who are proud to be the rats running INTO a sinking ship.

#4

Thank you for speaking to the truth. Our country seems to think that a homeless veteran should be treated better than a homeless civilian. VA health care not good? Gee, I wonder what the majority of our populations health care is like.

Our country doesn’t need to spend more money on defense, our country needs to account for the money we currently spend on defense. Defense Contractors, like our privatized prisons, are only motivated to provide shareholder value, they have no motivations to provide public value.

It is SAD, that 63 million Americans thought that an Oligarchy would fix the scenario that the 1% have spent decades and billions of dollars to create.

#5

The back-to-the-time-when-women-were-sacred thing really pissed me off when I heard about it. That was before I knew about his lying about Wilson’s earlier speech. His annoyance with the gold star family being at the Democratic Convention is pretty rich – does he recall why they were there? Who originally brought the Khan’s into the spotlight by disrespecting that Gold Star family?

Also, while I respect military folks as much as I respect my other fellow humans, his quote about feeling sorry about us poor non-serving people reminds me of this classic SNL commercial:

"It's not just a job, it's $96.78 a week."

Anyway, he sold his reputation when he agreed to work for the shitstain-in-chief. I thought he was possibly doing it out of some sense of duty to the country, and he thought he could help right the ship of state. Turns out, he’s just one of them, a lying asshole who wants to bring the US back to the '50s, when women had their place on the pedestal and in the kitchen, abortion was illegal, and all right Americans were god-fearing.

I had given him the benefit of the doubt, but fuck that guy.

#6

Excellent pitting.

#7

Yep. Kelly really screwed the pooch with this situation. But he agreed to be the CoS in the Trump administration. I’m sure he knew what he was getting himself into.

#8

I suspect that we’ve found the defining statement with regards to Donald Trump and his administration. Anything they complain about, anytime they bemoan the opposition, any expression of disappointment will only yield the same response, in lieu of a “fuck you”: they knew what they were getting themselves into.

#9

yes

#10

One among many defining statements to choose from. Nobody knew it would be so hard.

#11

Agreed with all this. Only thing to add, which I said elsewhere:

It’s possible that his recounting of the story about Wilson’s dedication of the building was an honest misremembering. There are a couple of possibilities: before slandering her in front of the nation, either he made the story up on purpose, or he gives so little a shit about the truth that he didn’t bother to check the record to verify his memories before going ahead with the slander.

Now that the record shows he’s unambiguously wrong, there are two different possibilities: either he’s a goddamned liar who trusts that Trump’s base won’t give a shit about the truth as long as he maintains the lie, or he’s a goddamned coward too craven to come forward with a full and unprovisional apology for his slander.

Maybe there are other possibilities. I don’t see any.

#12

I’ve basically been a cautious admirer of Kelly up to this point - perhaps naive an unwarranted but in recognition of the fact that he’s providing stability to a president who’s unhinged.

But I agree that he needs to come forward with an apology and some sort of clarification of his remarks. I could understand not recalling the facts correctly. It’s possible that Rep Wilson made comments off camera to people individually that he might have interpreted as grandstanding. But again, what he said does not comport with the facts. If he fails to acknowledge that, then in my view he’s just another sullied member of the administration.

The remarks at the end hardly even seem like his own, almost as if they were written by Donny himself. That’s what’s so puzzling. I found myself pretty much nodding to what he was saying until those final few moments at the end when he went off script and became the reincarnation of Al Haig

#13

I think it’s more likely he was fed the disinformation, it doesn’t seem like something he would have paid attention to at the time it “happened”.
Claiming Congresswoman Wilson took credit for something she didn’t do is right up this Administration’s alley.
Of course, he should know by now to double-check anything that pack of liars tells him.

#14

It’s true I didn’t account for the “pretended to remember when really he was fed the information.” That may be the worst of all possibilities: that means he deliberately lied (about his memory) AND he didn’t bother to check.

Also, a special shout-out to the assholes who look at the entire story and take the lesson that Wilson plays the race card too quickly. Look, motherfuckers: a black woman of Wilson’s age and background is going to have heard more than her share of powerful white men treating her like shit, and a lot of it is going to have been motivated by racism. If yet another powerful white man treats her like shit, and insults her, and she misdiagnoses the cause of his shitty treatment as racism, THAT’S NOT THE GODDAMNED STORY. The goddamned story is that Kelly acted like an asshole toward her, whether it’s because she’s black or because she’s a woman or because she’s a Democrat or because she dared criticize his boss.

His assholery, not the victim’s diagnosis of the etiology of the assholery, is what’s important; and if you focus on the latter instead of the former, you’re an asshole enabler.

#15

We have a President that’s surrounded himself with fraudsters like Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn; who has made laughable appointments like Pruitt, Perry, DeVos, Kushner. Looking for a silver lining in the cloud, we’ve come to regard Kelly, Mattis and Tillerson as the adults, the men of integrity separating this President from being an utter farce like North Korea’s Kim.

This was already rather laughable to start with. Rex Tillerson? He’s the man who consistently defied Obama’s foreign policy. Getting an uptick in Exxon stock was always more important to him than patriotism or morality. And Americans went along — after all, don’t most Americans affluent enough to follow political details have Exxon stock in one of their funds? Mad Dog Mattis? Probably the best of the three, but the Congress had to suspend law to allow a recently retired General to serve as SecDef. George Marshall? Colin Powell? They didn’t get this dispensation. Trump’s Mad Dog? No problem.

And there’s John Kelly. Another in a long line of Generals who have led our forces to defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan that exceed the Vietnam War in cost, duration and loss of prestige, but at least (we thought) he was a man of integrity.

Now we know he is a foul shit-mouthed liar following in the steps of his Commander in Chief. In another thread, Dopers debate whether there is proof of racism. (I think Kelly’s a racist but too smart to let that be obvious.) What we know for sure is that Kelly is a hard right-winger who has approved all of Trump’s worst policies; he actively pursued the Muslim ban when he was Sec HomeSec. To understand Kelly, just imagine Trump with another 30 IQ points.

Once we hoped Kelly was the new savior to keep Trump from chaos. Now, as nightmare continues to unfold, we know that was just wishful thinking.

#16

I hadn’t seen this before. I have never served in the military, but I have seen a lot of recruiting advertisements. They promote a lot of reasons other than “love of country” for people to sign up. Travel, adventure, training, benefits are all highlighted. Maybe he doesn’t have time to watch tv.

#17

In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

Hugh MacDiarmid

#18

I knew many who signed up because it was the only way they had to pay for college.

#19

Forget all the rest of the politics, Kelly just dishonored his own son. Next time the talking heads give him credit for being the adult in the White House they should check out his actual character. I think this episode of lying reveals what’s really inside this man. No surprise to me, another in a long line of disgraceful current and former generals.

We are seeing only the end of the beginning here. It’s all downhill from this point.

#20

The one thing that Kelly got right was the idea that TRUMP SHOULDNT BE MAKING THESE CALLS. But he couldn’t sell that idea to Trump which was his failure. Another thing I suspect Kelly got horribly stupidly wrong was thinking that telling Trump the lie about Obama not making calls would have the effect of making Trump quietly decide it wasn’t necessary. Because I’m pretty sure that’s what happened behind the scenes.

Instead Trump repeated Kelly’s lie publicly then doubled down.

If the call is done right, it is, in part, an apology. Because the POTUS is Commander-in-Chief and the soldier died under his command. The stuff about the soldier bravely volunteering only works in the context of an apology. If no apology is offered and/or the tone of the call is unapologetic then it looks like blame-shifting.

And one thing that is being lost in the shuffle is the fact that the widow was upset because Trump didn’t seem to know her husbands name.

And another inherent part of making these calls - if you insist on calling everyone and not a vetted selection- is knowing that they may not be well received. Sometimes the family is angry and will want to vent that anger. And sometimes the family is not in agreement with you politically and may want to express their differences. And you’re expected to suck it up. Their family member died under your watch and it’s partly, at least, your fault. Other presidents have taken that anger to heart. It drives home the incredible responsibility that come with the office.

But Trump is President. What more can I say. This duty should be delegated to Pence.

And John Kelly is a weak-willed piece of shit that his been bullied into being just another submissive Trump toady. Because for his entire life Trump has lived in the ultimate bubble, one where the prime directive of everyone in his orbit is “Let him win or all hell will break loose”. So now his staff must engage in a constant stream of bizzarro world press conferences in order to twist every gaffe into a win.