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.
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I’m absolutely double-positive it won’t surprise you to learn that America’s favorite poster-person for bluster, blowhardiness and bong-bouncy-bunk went on Fox News on Sunday and made a threat. Amazingly, she didn’t threaten to expose alleged corruption by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by quoting a Russian think-tank bot-factory known as Strategic Culture Foundation, as she did last November. Rather, the Congressperson from North Georgia made her eleventy-zillionth threat to oust the Speaker of the House from her own party, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), using the Motion to Vacate she filed last month. She told Fox viewers she wanted to return to her House district to “listen to voters” before acting, however.
MTM is upset with Speaker Johnson because he engineered the passage of a $91 billion supplemental aid package that included $61 billion in aid to Ukraine by teaming up with Democrats to get it passed, thus violating the Republican Party’s Thirteenth Commandment, don’t do anything Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin don’t tell you to do. The Mouth from the South has been all talk and no action when it comes to the Motion to Vacate she filed in late March.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the Congressman from the Bamboo Fiber Ballot state, joined Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in sponsoring The Mouth’s motion to rid the Republican conference of its Speaker. Some Republican allies of Speaker Johnson have offered to put forth a change in the rule that allows a single member to force a vote to vacate the speakership, but Johnson has brushed off the offer, seeming to challenge the Mouth to go ahead with her threat. She hasn’t taken him up on it, however.
With three Republican sponsors, the Motion to Vacate the Speakership will pass if every Democrat votes to join them, giving Republicans the rare opportunity to throw the House of Representatives into chaos for the third time in two years.
House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is unlikely to allow that to happen, however, and is reportedly rubbing his hands together with glee as he calculates what price he will exact from puppet Speaker Johnson in the coming weeks and months. With the word “bipartisan” having returned to the Washington D.C. lexicon thanks to Marjorie Taylor Mouth, anything could happen.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
Vanity Fair recently reported that several journalists from mainstream publications, including The Washington Post, NBC News, Axios, and Vanity Fair, were denied press access to Trump’s campaign events, seemingly in retaliation for their previous critical coverage. Meanwhile, Media Matters found that the campaign has granted press credentials to the QAnon-promoting MG Show and Brenden Dilley, a podcaster who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory and leads a “meme team” that creates pro-Trump content.
Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf has allegedly been barred from Trump’s campaign events since February, according to Vanity Fair, over his rejection of a campaign request to change the title of his book Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy. Several other reporters also allegedly had press access revoked over critical coverage or public spats with campaign officials. Vanity Fair reported:
In recent weeks, the [Trump] campaign has taken similar punitive measures against other reporters, according to multiple sources familiar with the moves. An Axios reporter had their credentials approved for an event and then revoked the same day, following the publication of a story about the Trump-led Republican National Committee’s struggles in swing states. (An Axios spokesperson declined to comment.) At least one other Post reporter was temporarily denied press credentials to multiple events after accurately reporting on Trump’s public statements. Most recently, Brian Stelter, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, was denied press access to Trump’s rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.
While it has barred mainstream journalists, the campaign has granted press credentials to a QAnon-promoting show and a podcaster who creates pro-Trump content.
At least one host of the QAnon-promoting podcast MG Show was seemingly given a press pass for Trump’s December 17 campaign rally in Reno, Nevada. Days before the rally, co-host Shannon Townsend announced on the podcast that after seeking press passes for the rally, the show was granted the status of “accredited media with Donald Trump and the rally campaign.” Afterward, Townsend posted images from the rally, including one that appears to show him holding a press pass in a media area.
In response to reporter Brian Stelter posting on April 19, “I applied for press credentials for Trump's most recent rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania and was rejected,” Townsend shared an image of his credentials for the Nevada rally, and said, “I have mine.”
MG Show had previously received press credentials for a 2021 Trump rally in Sarasota, Florida, at which host Townsend wore a wristband with the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all” — or “WWG1WGA” for short — and led a crowd in chanting the slogan. The Trump campaign was forced to publicly distance itself from QAnon and MG Show after receiving backlash for credentialing the conspiracy theorists.
In January, Brenden Dilley, a podcaster who has previously promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, bragged that he was given press credentials for the Trump campaign's Iowa caucus event.
Dilley has been the leader of a pro-Trump online “meme team” which calls itself “Trump’s Online War Machine,” and he has admitted that he “make[s] shit up” to further Trump’s agenda and hurt his political opponents. During an episode of his show, Dilley displayed the press pass, bragging that he got a “special” and “exclusive” press credential that got him into the “Trump War Room,” where he said “pretty much the entire Team Trump comes through.”
Barring mainstream journalists from campaign rallies and other events is hardly new for the Trump team. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump and his allies waged an all-out war on the press, including banning certain journalists from events, and attacking critical coverage and entire mainstream news outlets as “fake news.”
Trump's presidential term was also marked by repeated instances where mainstream journalists were barred from official events and press conferences over unflattering coverage and unwanted questions. And his reelection campaign also reportedly issued a blanket credential denial against Bloomberg News over the outlet’s perceived “bias” against him.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.