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.
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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.
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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.
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.