I was not one of the people deceived into thinking john kelly would bring some respectability to the drumpf/trump-pence administration and White House. NOBODY associated with this fascist administration has any class or respectability, if they did they wouldn't have anything to do with NOT MY pres drumpf/trump and NOT MY vp pence. john kelly has shown his true colors with his recent rants showing while he did serve in the U.S. military he was an unwilling defender of democracy and would be more at home in one of the dictatorships drumpf/trump-pence admire. And remember, the present cic, Not My pres drumpf/trump was saved from the Vietnam war by the best medical deferments available to the rich and powerful of the time (there is a history of draft dodging in drumpf's/trump's family). From DailyKos and Roll Call.....
Chief of staff Kelly stunned by blowback after his slanderous attack on a Florida congresswoman
Tucked within this telling New York Times profile of White House chief of staff John Kelly is this nugget about how shocked he and other Trump aides were that his defamatory attack on Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson drew wide condemnation.
Mr. Kelly decided himself to head out to the White House briefing room to defend the president, colleagues said, and most of his remarks reflected on his own experience as the father of a slain soldier and the nature of military service. He brought tears to the eyes of other White House aides, who afterward traded emails expressing admiration for Mr. Kelly’s passionate defense of Mr. Trump. It was only afterward that they began to see how the attack on Ms. Wilson came to overshadow the emotion of the first part of his speech.Mr. Kelly was surprised by the criticism of his speech, colleagues said, but he has not apologized to Ms. Wilson for making false statements about her. White House officials said they opted against it to avoid extending the story.
Let's review.
Kelly chose to make the remarks.
Aides were shocked that he got blowback after he smeared the reputation of a congresswoman who had close ties to the family of slain soldier Sgt. La David Johnson.
The slanderous attack apparently didn't register with White House aides because they were so wowed by Kelly's "passionate defense" of a pr*sident who has repeatedly attacked Gold Star families and had fueled a week's worth of controversy by telling bald-faced lies about his communication with the families of fallen soldiers—as if defending Trump was the honorable thing to do in the first place.
Kelly himself was stunned that the dishonorable act of flat-out lying to defend a pr*sident who himself had spent a week lying about Niger and Gold Star families wasn't well received.
Kelly, who had inserted himself into the conversation on his own volition, then decided for political reasons that he would just let his character assassination of Rep. Frederica Wilson stand—to avoid extending the story.
And yet, even as Trump—the guy Kelly was so insistent on defending—continued to extend the story by calling grieving widow Myeshia Johnson a liar, Kelly remained silent. In fact, Kelly allowed Sarah Huckabee Sanders to use his military service and Gold Star status to deny the truth that he had outright smeared Rep. Wilson.
It just goes to show: you can’t profess to be upholding some “sacred” set of ideals when you’re defending a guy who holds absolutely nothing sacred.
Pentagon Document Contradicts Trump’s Gold Star Claims
Email undermines veracity of president’s statement about Gold Star contacts
In the hours after President Donald Trump said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families, according to an internal Defense Department email.
The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy.
Not only had the president not contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed this year, the White House did not even have an up-to-date list of those who had been killed.
The exchange between the White House and the Defense secretary’s office occurred about 5 p.m. on Oct. 17. The White House asked the Pentagon for information about surviving family members of all servicemembers killed after Trump’s inauguration so that the president could be sure to contact all of them.
Capt. Hallock Mohler, the executive secretary to Defense Secretary James Mattis, provided the White House with information in the 5 p.m. email about how each servicemember had died and the identity of his or her survivors, including phone numbers.
The email’s subject line was, “Condolence Letters Since 20 January 2017.”
Mohler indicated in the email that he was responding to a request from the president’s staff for information through Ylber Bajraktari, an aide on the National Security Council. The objective was to figure out who among so-called Gold Star families of the fallen Trump had yet to call. Mohler’s email said that the president’s aides “reached out to Ylber looking for the following ASAP from DOD.”
Trump had said in a Fox News Radio interview earlier that day that he had contacted the families of “virtually everybody” in the military who had been killed since he was inaugurated.
“I have called, I believe, everybody — but certainly I’ll use the word virtually everybody,” Trump said.
Since then, the Associated Press contacted 20 families and found that half had not heard from Trump. It is not clear how many of the families that have heard from the president received the calls this week, since the controversy over his contacts with military families erupted. It is not clear when the White House first asked for data on Gold Star families, but it is clear that the answers had not been provided before Tuesday.
The Pentagon email indicates that 21 military personnel had been killed in action during Trump’s tenure, and an additional 44 had been killed by means other than enemy fire, such as ship collisions that took 17 sailors’ lives in the Pacific this summer.
Trump has clearly been active in reaching out to military families who have suffered the ultimate loss, as the AP reports show.
But the White House-Pentagon email scramble Tuesday undermines the veracity of Trump’s statement about his record of contacting all Gold Star families. The internal document also sheds light on how the White House staff, on this and other occasions, has had to go into damage-control mode when the president makes inaccurate statements.
On Oct. 18, the day after the president’s aides had sought and received the Gold Star family data from the Pentagon, a reporter at a White House press conference asked Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether Trump had in fact contacted all the families.
“The president’s made contact with all of the families that have been presented to him through the White House Military Office,” she replied. “All of the individuals that the president has been presented with through the proper protocol have been contacted through that process.”
That language is hedged. “Made contact” does not mean a phone call necessarily, and “through that process” could mean letters of condolence or other forms.
The administration echoed Sanders’ language Friday night.
“The White House ensured that the President had contacted all families of soldiers killed in action that had been presented to him through existing protocols,” spokesman Raj Shah said in an email.
White House chief of staff John Kelly on Thursday said he was "stunned" by the uproar over Donald Trump's phone call to the grieving widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed earlier this month in Niger. Kelly then proceeded to scapegoat Congresswoman Frederica Wilson for violating the sacred trust of a president.
"It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation," said Kelly, a former four-star Marine General whose son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. "Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred."
Let's just start by acknowledging that Rep. Wilson is not the one who started this conversation. If Kelly is looking for the culprit, he can walk straight into the Oval Office, because it's Donald Trump who has turned patriotism into a political weapon. It was Trump who in trying to explain his failure to contact the families of four fallen soldiers fumbled his way into falsely accusing President Obama of never having called Gold Star families. It was Trump who dragged Kelly's son, Marine Second Lieutenant Robert Kelly, into the political spotlight by pointing out that Obama hadn't called Gen. Kelly following his son’s death. It was Trump who in trying to cover his butt following the blowback over his lies and politicization of the issue made the clumsy call to a grieving widow in which he relayed that her husband “knew what he was signing up for." It was Trump who then lied again, tweeting that Wilson had "totally fabricated" his unconscionable comments and said he had "proof" that she had done so.
Well, that "proof" dissolved into the exceedingly thin air occupying Trump's head and so the White House sent Gen. Kelly out to address America about a story their boss has stoked all week. We can only take that as confirmation that Wilson's initial characterization of what Trump said was 100 percent accurate.
For his part, Kelly explained from the White House podium that Trump, who had supposedly already been making these calls, asked Kelly what he should say when he reached out to these four families. Trump also asked him if President Obama had called him and he told Trump, no. Kelly then relayed what he told Trump about these phone calls with the clear intention of explaining the terribly mangled sentiments Trump eventually delivered. Kelly quoted the person who had informed him of his son's death in 2010, his close friend Gen. Joe Dunford.
He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were, because we're at war. And when he died—and the four cases we're talking about Niger, my son's case in Afghanistan—when he died he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends. That's what the president tried to say to four families the other day. I was stunned at what I saw a member of Congress doing.
What's also stunning is what Kelly left unsaid. What about Trump lying about Obama's phone calls—did that violate a sacred trust? What about Trump using Kelly's son to deflect from his own failures—did that violate a sacred trust? What about Trump accusing Rep. Wilson of lying—did that violate a sacred trust? What about Trump insulting a Gold Star family during the campaign—did that violate a sacred trust? What about Trump turning this entire issue of fallen soldiers into a political weapon—did that violate a sacred trust?
Since Kelly just blamed this sad episode on Rep. Wilson, here's a bit of her backstory.
“He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.” This was according to Wilson, who late yesterday told The Post that she had overheard the call on a speakerphone while riding in a limousine with Johnson when Trump called, and that this exchange made the widow cry. [...]Wilson said she had known the slain solder for a long time, noting that he had passed through the mentoring program for boys of color she founded in Miami in 1993. It’s called the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project. She said she had “practically raised” him. She added that there is also a scholarship fund bearing his name.
Gen. John Kelly has made untold sacrifices for this country—not only did he lose one son, he still has another who is serving in the military. His service and commitment to our country are to be commended. But it is simply not fair to blame the way this conversation about military service, Gold Star families, and paying the ultimate sacrifice has devolved on a congresswoman from Florida. That defies reason, given the way Donald Trump has conducted himself over the past week. He’s led this race to the bottom.
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