Tag: frederica wilson
Kelly: When A (Retired) General Goes Off Half-Cocked

Kelly: When A (Retired) General Goes Off Half-Cocked

Silly me, here I’d been fantasizing about a soft military coup preventing the Braggart-in-Chief from starting World War III. Surely the Pentagon has procedures for removing emotionally-incapacitated commanders, and Trump’s generals, as he calls them, must have made contingency plans.
Or maybe not.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that arguing with a four-star Marine general like White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is almost sacrilegious. Americans haven’t always thought so. I had two uncles who’d served under Gen. Douglas MacArthur—one in the Philippines, the other in Korea. They considered him a vainglorious blowhard who was reckless with his men’s lives.
They’d have agreed with President Harry S. Truman’s explanation for why he’d cashiered MacArthur in 1951: “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President,” Truman told Time. “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
Service as grunts in the Pacific had also persuaded my uncles that going into Vietnam was folly. They were keen to convince me that it wasn’t necessary to go to war to be a man—advice that, like Donald J. Trump, I was eager to hear. No bone-spurs here, merely educational deferments.
I do not apologize.
History teaches that while military virtues are real—duty, honor, sacrifice and courage—so are military vices: chief among them authoritarianism and an inability to admit error. Generals spend the first half of their careers polishing apples, and their command years getting their apples shined. That can lead to an inability to see other people’s point of view—particularly those of lower rank.
Hence Gen. Kelly’s unfortunate role in Trump’s latest degrading Twitter feud—exchanging insults with a congresswoman in a silly hat over the president’s ill-fated attempt to console a 23 year-old war widow.
Ill-fated because this president utterly lacks compassion, and pretty clearly bungled his effort to deliver the script Kelly offered him. The general’s dignified, moving description of a friend’s advice about how to talk to bereaved families evidently came out very differently in Trump’s mouth.
Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow Myeshia recalled the president saying that her husband “knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. And it made me cry. I was very angry at the tone of his voice, and how he said it.”
One can certainly question Rep. Frederica S. Wilson’s motives for making a political issue of so intimate a moment, but everybody who overheard the exchange on speaker-phone as Sgt. Johnson’s people drove to the airport to collect his remains heard it the same way.
Trump struck them as cold and unfeeling.
At that point, a normal man—even a normal politician—would apologize for expressing himself clumsily, praise Sgt. Johnson’s heroism, offer further condolences to the families of all the Green Berets killed in Niger, petition God to bless the United States of America, and put it behind him.
But that’s now how Donald J. Trump rolls. So he began attacking the “WACKY” congresswoman, and sent his pet general out to double down on her. Or maybe Gen. Kelly volunteered.
Either way, he gave a lacerating account of a speech delivered by Rep. Wilson at the dedication of a new FBI building in her district in 2013.
“A congresswoman stood up,” Kelly told reporters,“and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down. And we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.”
Trouble was, apart from the fact that Rep. Frederica Wilson did, indeed, speak at the FBI building dedication, everything Kelly said about her speech was completely false—and was proven so when the Florida Sun-Sentinel published a video recording.
Wearing her trademark cowgirl hat, Wilson said nothing about securing funding for the building, because she hadn’t. She never mentioned President Obama at all. She did praise GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who helped her to get the building named for two fallen FBI agents whose heroism she extolled at length.
I doubt Kelly lied, but something about Rep. Wilson clearly set off the retired general. Democrat? Woman? Black woman? Or maybe it was just the damn hat. Whatever, he owes her an apology, but I doubt she’ll get it.
See, when generals go off half-cocked, everybody has to salute.
But John Kelly’s not in uniform anymore.

#EndorseThis: Why Trevor Noah Is So Angry At John Kelly

#EndorseThis: Why Trevor Noah Is So Angry At John Kelly

Trevor Noah never says so, but it is easy to imagine why John Kelly’s attack on Rep. Frederica Wilson pisses him off. What Kelly did by lying about Wilson — and presumably imagining he could get away with it — represented a textbook example of white male privilege inflicted on a black woman.

A retired Marine general and Gold Star father, now serving as White House chief of staff, Kelly no doubt believed he could utter any insult that popped into his head about that lady in the bedazzled cowboy hat. And everybody would believe him. Not her.

But appearances can be as deceptive as a Trump White House staffer. And fortunately for Rep. Wilson, and for America, there is videotape of the incident that Kelly mentioned to defame her.

The Daily Show makes the most of it.

 

Now We Know John Kelly

Now We Know John Kelly

After all the sound and fury and infantile tweeting, what have we learned from the controversy over the president’s call to Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow? We still don’t know much about why he and his three fellow Green Berets died or what the U.S. mission may be in Niger. But we again discovered something about Donald Trump that should have been obvious for a long time: Getting too close to him will eventually ruin anybody’s reputation.

In this instance, the permanent damage was done to John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who serves as White House chief of staff. Brought in to rescue this debacle of an incompetent and ill-intentioned administration, Kelly was well respected despite his role in implementing Trump’s heartless, bigoted immigration policies at the Department of Homeland Security.

His dubious record both there and in the White House, where he plainly failed to curtail the worst excesses of this presidency, were mostly blamed on Trump. Indeed, Kelly evoked sympathy for the impossible nature of his job.

As a Gold Star father, who lost one of his two Marine sons seven years ago in Afghanistan, Kelly was entitled to a much deeper kind of sympathy. That tragic sacrifice naturally enhanced his earned authority as a four-star flag officer.

Kelly’s authority began to wither, however, minutes after Kelly stepped before a White House podium to rescue Trump from his own mess — and to attack Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) for revealing the president’s insensitive “consolation” of Johnson’s widow Myeshia. Rather than disproving Wilson’s account, Kelly confirmed that he had given Trump talking points that coincided precisely with her recollection — and that the president, coldly devoid of compassion, had flubbed it.

Clumsy as it was, Kelly’s attempt to explain that incident was excusable and even understandable, as the necessary duty of a presidential aide. He may well have felt responsible in some way for Trump’s phone-call fiasco. But then he went a step further, with the blithering arrogance and venomous excess that are so typical of this presidency.

Only a true Trumpster could complain morosely, as Kelly did, that America no longer reveres women and Gold Star families — as if the president he serves were not notorious for disrespecting and demeaning both. And only a true Trumpster would then embark on a nasty, wholly inaccurate assault on the character of a critic like Wilson — as if demeaning her would somehow excuse Trump.

Kelly claimed that Wilson had illicitly “listened in” on Trumps conversation with Myeshia Johnson.But she only happened to have been present, as a close family friend and mentor of Sgt. Johnson. Kelly accused Wilson of grandstanding at the dedication of the FBI building in Miami. Kelly called her “an empty barrel” and derided her as “selfish,” saying that her self-serving remarks had “stunned” and “appalled” the audience.

Video of that event showed Kelly was lying, or at best misremembering — and proved that Wilson had done nothing like what he described. On that same day, in a speech Kelly described as “brilliant,” FBI director James Comey had singled out Wilson for praise because she had acted with such alacrity to ensure that the Miami building was named for two agents gunned down in the line of duty.

What made Kelly’s angry denunciation of Wilson so Trumpish was that even when he had been proved utterly wrong, he sent word to the press that he “absolutely” stood by his inaccurate statement. And Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders compounded the offense by warning that nobody should cast doubt on a four-star general, as if we live in Pinochet’s Chile instead of a country where freedom to criticize public officials is constitutionally guaranteed. That is the country and the constitution that Kelly, his sons, and Sgt. Johnson all swore to protect.

He served Trump poorly in this disgraceful episode, which they could have resolved so easily, with far better results for the president and the country. He could have urged Trump to express regret if Myeshia Johnson misunderstood his words or intentions. He could have acted with dignity and restraint himself, instead of petulance and condescension. He could have promoted unity and respect rather than the usual angry division.

But then he wouldn’t belong in Trump’s White House.