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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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested in a weekend interview that it is “unfortunate” that lying Republican lawmaker Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has less power than President Joe Biden.
McCarthy made the bizarre claim on Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin in response to a rhetorical question tabled by longtime far-rightist and Biden critic Mark Levin in a segment awash with groundless assertions and right-wing conspiracy theories.
Levin kick-started the show with a populist tirade about the radicalization of school boards in the last 15 years — a period that encapsulates the tenure of two Republican presidents, including ex-President Donald Trump.
During that time, Levin alleged, “Academia, the radical left, and the American Marxists” have sought to “control what you think, but even more… what your kids think” via “advanced placement courses.”
After the outlandish tangent, Levin brought on McCarthy and opened the interview with a rhetorical question to pander to the base: “Who has more power, Joe Biden or Rep. George Santos [R-NY)?”
The softball drew a gleeful chuckle from McCarthy, who responded, “Well, right now, I think it is the president, Joe Biden, unfortunately.”
\u201cQuestion: Who has more power? Joe Biden or George Santos? \nMcCarthy: Joe Biden unfortunately\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1675041814
Then, Levin — an avid supporter of Trump, who publicly made over 30,000 false claims in his time at the White House alone — launched into a rant baselessly claiming that Biden had misled Americans on myriad issues, which Levin claimed mattered more to him than Santos’ fibs.
“[Santos] has nothing to do with me. That guy, [Biden], is President of the United States; every decision he makes affects me,” Levin cried at high volume, labeling the president as dishonest as Santos.
News outlets across the political spectrum have covered Santos’ many lies, from his name, education, heritage, career, marriage, and fundraising to the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death.
Despite Santos’ entanglement deep within a self-spun web of lies, spurring multiple investigations and calls from his Republican colleagues for his resignation, McCarthy put the freshman lawmaker on two House committees and deflected questions on the appointment.
The speaker has come under fire for caving into the fringe demands of the extreme-right wing of his conference in exchange for the U.S. House speakership, which he clinched only after 15 rounds of voting over four grueling days.
Levin, on the other hand, was one of the Fox News personalities who used their platforms to push, unfiltered, the false narrative that widespread voter fraud orchestrated by Democrats had cost Trump a resounding victory in the 2020 presidential election.
“Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are being destroyed by the Democratic Party and the media, and they want to destroy what is left of it,” Levin told his viewers three days before a Trump mob stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to the New York Times.
Levin had also lambasted Republican senators who were steering clear of Trump’s Big Lie and called on the Supreme Court to intervene in the Republican Party’s fight to keep then-President Trump, who had lost his re-election bid, in power after his defeat.
In early December, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), himself an election denier, blasted Levin for calling out the ultraconservative bloc of House Republicans barring McCarthy’s path to becoming House Speaker.
“Levin is the biggest fraud in politics right now. For years, this guy castigated McCarthy publicly (with no shame). Now, he is all in for him and wants his audience to turn a blind eye. Total fraud,” Biggs tweeted.
Twitter users also ripped into Levin and McCarthy for their insidious allegations that Biden had misled the public just as much as — or, perhaps, even more than — Santos had, and that the latter deserved presidential power more than Biden.
\u201c@Acyn Yeah that's what we need - a serial liar with power. We all saw how that turned out.\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1675041814
\u201c@Acyn @kate_moylan Translation: I\u2019d rather have George Santos as president than Joe Biden\n\nThere\u2019s no bottom.\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1675041814
\u201c@Acyn The fact that @SpeakerMcCarthy wishes the conman Santos was more powerful than the President tells you all you need to know about him and his pitiful party.\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1675041814
- McCarthy Names Conspiracist Greene To Covid-19 Investigative Panel ›
- Far-Right Media Scorch Fox News Over Support For McCarthy ›
- McCarthy Defames Swalwell, But Won't Answer Questions About Santos (VIDEO) ›
- Until Final Vote, McCarthy Opponents Raised Money Off Speaker Debacle ›
- McCarthy And Allies Deny Secret Deal Memo Exists (They're Lying) ›
- There's No Pretending That Kevin McCarthy Is 'Mainstream' Or 'Moderate' ›
This is the first of what is sure to be way too many campaign columns to come. If you’d like them to land in your email inbox every time I write one, please buy a subscription.
There is very little I dislike more than covering electoral politics, but here I am, filling up my tank this time with coffee, not gas, getting ready to follow the bus once again. The bus, in case you are wondering, is a reference to the gang of political reporters who cover political campaigns. Tim Crouse’s epic The Boys on the Bus, which was about the experience of covering the 1972 presidential campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, introduced non-professionals to the cloistered world of the gang – and yes, they were all male back then – of political reporters covering that campaign.
I covered, in my own fashion, the presidential campaign that year, chiefly by writing a 6,000 word article on the Republican National Convention in Miami for the late-lamented Saturday Review. I have no idea how or why the editors of that relatively straight-laced journal reached down into the so-called underground press, of which The Village Voice was the presiding Grande Dame, and gave me that plum assignment. The underground press, for those born after I-don’t-know-what-year, was the group of newspapers and some magazines like Creem and Rolling Stone which occupied the dark space beneath the sunlit mainstream press like the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune – not to mention CBS, NBC, and ABC, all of which had reporters on the bus covering the Nixon and McGovern campaigns.
Needless to say, I wasn’t on the bus that year or any other, thus I followed the bus, as it were, covering, in addition to the Republican convention, lesser campaigns such as John Kerry’s losing run for Congress in ’72 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The most fascinating campaign I covered that year was for a seat on the county board of supervisors in White County, Illinois, far enough south in the state that the nearest “big” cities were Evansville, Indiana, and Paducah, Kentucky. In that race, “Pud” Williams, the Democrat, was running against “Fat” Ziegler, the Republican. The story I wrote for the Voice covering Pud’s campaign was called “Pud and Oop vs. Fat.”
A fellow farmer, Oop Gardner, was Pud’s campaign manager, whose job chiefly consisted of driving out to whatever field Pud was plowing or planting. Oop would pull up on a farm road and run out to Pud’s tractor and give him the news about Fat’s latest lie or vote-buying scheme, and together, Pud and Oop would decide how best to counter Fat’s most recent political move, and Pud would go back to plowing or planting, and Oop would drive over to the nearest general store that had a pay phone and issue orders to friends of the two men who were serving as campaign workers, and they in turn would man the rumor mill that was centered in cafes and gas stations and spread the word about Fat’s scams and questionable promises, which mainly consisted of assuring voters that he would endeavor to get them jobs on the county road crew.
It was politics at its most basic, county level, but Pud’s campaign involved everything that was being covered on the national campaign press bus – issues, turnout, appeals to the youth vote, attempts to manipulate voting laws, buying votes, personalities, grudges dating to old campaigns, families split down the middle politically – you name it, that campaign in the rich, flat farmland of southern Illinois had it all. The bus was a borrowed pickup truck, the hotel was a spare room in my friend David Vaught’s house, and best of all, the candidates were not named Nixon or McGovern.
Oh, for the days when presidential campaigns started the year of the election with the two parties’ state primaries followed by a general election that didn’t really get going until the day after Labor Day. It’s depressing to think that the current presidential race is already underway. If you read online stuff like Politico Playbook and Axios and if you watch MSNBC, the campaign has been underway since the last one ended, covering national political campaigns having turned into a full-time job at least a couple of decades ago. They were running presidential polls practically the day after Biden’s inauguration.
It is called the horse race for reasons that are at once obvious and disgusting -- the whole who’s ahead in the polls, who’s raising the most money, who’s talking about running, who’s “putting out feelers” – so you know not only what’s coming but what’s already here. This year’s horse race was centered on the questions of will he or won’t he followed by when will he – about Donald Trump announcing, naturally. As questions go, they didn’t amount to much, but then the political pros in the journalism game don’t require questions when raw speculation, informed or not, is always there waiting for a few hundred words in a column or a few flapping lips on the cable news shows. But don’t you wish they’d come up with somebody new to interview? I mean, James Carville was Bill Clinton’s campaign manager 30 years ago, and Steve Schmidt held the reins for John McCain 15 years ago.
And now the horse race has begun again. Every time Ron DeSantis gets indigestion, there are political reporters nearby to report what key he’s burping in. Chris Christie – remember the Governor of the George Washington Bridge? – chirped on one of the talk shows recently about Republicans who might announce for president, and it was like Moses had Fed Exed the tablets to a hundred newsrooms. If another story appeared about Trump’s “stalled” campaign, I was ready to turn off my newsfeeds and throw a comforter over my head and hide out for the duration.
You had to be deaf not to hear the collective sigh of relief by political journalists when Trump scheduled his first two official campaign appearances over the weekend. He spoke at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual meeting in some burg called Salem and then shot down to Columbia, South Carolina, where he introduced his state campaign leadership team, according to a report on PBS. Coverage of the South Carolina appearance centered on how many state Republican officals the Trump campaign wasn’t able to turn out, apparently because some were holding out for Nikki Haley, who is said to be considering a run for president herself.
Listen to some of the coverage: PBS interviewed Dave Wilson, president of conservative Christian nonprofit Palmetto Family, about support for Trump in the state. I have never heard of him either, but steel yourself, because we’re in for many more interviews with minor characters and political hangers-on as the year progresses. Anyway, Dave was good enough to tell PBS that while “Trump did some phenomenal things when he was president,” conservative voters in South Carolina weren’t happy with Trump’s recent comment that Republicans who don’t want exceptions for rape or incest in the anti-abortion laws sweeping the country were responsible for the dismal election returns suffered in the midterms last November.
The Washington Post covered Trump’s appearance in New Hampshire by emphasizing that some Republicans at the convention “would prefer a new face in 2024.” Karen Umberger, a delegate to the convention, told the Post that “it’s time for a younger person or someone new to have their time.”
The New York Times, in covering Trump’s New Hampshire appearance, said “his speeches carried a typically Trumpian timbre.” Among other promises, “Trump [said] his candidacy was a shield for the country from communism and Marxism and vowed to keep transgender athletes out of women’s sports.”
“I am more angry now and I am more committed now than ever,” Trump told the Republican delegates. The paper went on to note that “on his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump has been posting videos about his policy positions, including plans to protect Social Security and Medicare and ban Chinese citizens from owning U.S. farmland or telecommunications, energy, technology or medical supply companies.” Online, the paper even went so far as to enable the words “policy positions” if you clicked on them to link you to the streaming website Rumble where you can watch Trump on short videos pitching his policy promises.
Wow. That’s some news right there, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve waited two long years to hear what Trump has to say about communism and Marxism, haven’t you?
In all the coverage of the launch of his campaign, as “low key” as it was, I could find only one gentle mention, on CNN, of Trump being under investigation by the Department of Justice for his mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and for, as CNN carefully put it, “parts of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”
Of course, CNN immediately added that classified documents were found at President Biden’s personal residence and that Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.
So get ready for it, folks. The august members of the national political press have taken their seats in the bleachers and the horse race is now officially on. Just don’t look for them to acknowledge that a suspected felon who faces grand juries in Washington, New York, and Georgia is running against a man who has never been accused of a felony, who has never been sued by a porn star, and who has never claimed to have grabbed women or anybody else for that matter by their nether regions.
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.
