A couple of days ago I submitted an open letter to John Kelly. Never did I expect that he would answer the question about whether he was a decent human being or not, so soon.
But, after only two days, we have the answer. He sold his soul, cheaply, to the devil. It is a sad moment indeed for someone who rose to the rank of 4 star to see him flush it all away for a shitty person like Trump.
Then again, Harry Harris is a COCOM and he sold his soul to the devil as an O-5. Guess there is some return on one’s investment in evil.
But the most amazing part to me is that Kelly is not even really gaining anything from the deal. The lies are so transparent, that all anyone will remember in the future is, “He was a Goddamned liar!”.
You can use the words, WTF, now.
And well you should. Why the hell is he doing this?
The last three weeks have shown a different side of Kelly. After Trump used the case of Kelly’s son, a Marine killed in Afghanistan, to score political points in a battle over condolences to Gold Star families, some pundits expected a poor reaction from Kelly. Instead, the chief of staff came back to the lectern in the Brady Briefing Room—his second, rare appearance there in a week—and staunchly defended Trump. Then he lit into Representative Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat, as an “empty barrel,” offering what turned out to be an inaccurate recollection of an event in 2015. When video evidence showed that Kelly’s account was false, he refused to apologize.
This is distinctively Trumpian behavior, and as Peter Baker wrote in an incisive New York Times story last week, there was more of this behind the scenes. During a discussion of refugee quotas, Kelly reportedly said he thought the appropriate figure was zero. He also said that Mexico was a third-world state on the verge of Venezuela-style collapse. Although Mexico’s government is precarious, his dire analysis is shared by few observers.
Wow. Just wow. Of course, it is not a surprise to everyone:
There were clues to Kelly’s alignment with Trump all along, but they were overshadowed by the focus on his orderliness. It was not coincidence that he was chosen to lead the Department of Homeland Security after Trump ran the most aggressive border-security and immigration-opposing platform in generations, nor that he took to the mission with gusto and won Trump’s approval for his performance. As commander of the U.S. Southern Command during his military career, he was an unreconstructed drug warrior and opposed the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, even sabotaging Obama administration efforts to do so, White House officials complained to Reuters. He also dismissed critiques of torture techniques used after 9/11.
In his ambivalent approach to Trump—positive or even enthusiastic on substance, dismayed on style—Kelly is not dissimilar from many other Republicans. Trump is sometimes presented as a radical break from GOP orthodoxy (not least by conservatives, both Republicans and ex-Republicans, who oppose him), and there are policy areas such as free trade where that is true. The break is not so clear, though. Kelly fits with a group of Republicans who are culturally conservative—they were uncomfortable with gay marriage but have mostly come around; they would never identify themselves as racist, and respect Martin Luther King, but think the police deserve respect and are unnerved by Black Lives Matter; they generally get the critique of Confederate monuments, but they don’t see why it’s a big deal and are uncomfortable with the idea of tearing down the statues, viewing it as radical iconoclasm. They are the kind of Republicans who privately thought Jesse Helms was a racist nut, but weren’t opposed to running a Willie Horton-style ad in a tight race.
There are words for this. Most of them are profanity. Enjoy life in hell, Mr. Kelly. You are bringing this on yourself. If this is what you truly believe, then you are scum, just like Trump.
Express train to hell. No local stops. It appears you have made your choice and so you will suffer as will your boss, Mr. Kelly.