In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

Kelly concluded, “God help us.”

  • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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    Too little, Too late. John Kelly is culpable for everything trump said and did, and pretending to be outraged about it after the fact makes him a slimy piece of shit too. And the same goes for all the scumbags willing to look the other way for personal gain and political power. I hope your disgrace follows you for the rest of your lives.

    • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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      Everyone should remember that when these people say these things, what they’re also telling you is that they just let it happen. They stood by and said nothing. The reason they did was because they wanted to ride the new king’s coattails. They banked on the party lasting forever… Now they’re gonna sing and cry crocodile tears.

      Too little, too late! No clemency! No pity! However, please do continue. We want to make sure you have company where you’re going!

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      Kelly and Mattis were also used early in the Trump Administration to “prove” Trump was a grownup who would listen to intelligent people behind the scenes. Both of them should have known better.

      • Dr. Dabbles@lemmy.world
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        all of them. The more recent they join up the worst they are, but every single one of them knew exactly who they were getting in bed with. Every. Single. One.

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
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      Only after the orange malignant narcissist disparaged Kelly’s son’s death did Kelly come forward.

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    TLDR, an accessory to crimes and all around piece of shit trying to make themselves look like less of a bad guy.

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    A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,

    As suspected but also yikes.

    A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

    Also pretty clear. He wants to be a tinpot dictator in the same vein as Putin and Kim.

    CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.

    Lol.

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    What’s interesting is that Trump seems to have no conception at all that he will go down in history as a terrible human being and general loser.

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
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      He’s like a little kid that wants attention. Getting attention for being naughty is just as good as getting attention for being good, but is much easier.

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        This is exactly it.

        His dad was a serious piece of work and Donald is forever trying to impress him because he was starved as a child of genuine affection.

        I have compassion for him.

        But, it doesn’t trump the compassion I have for all of the people he’s hurt, directly and indirectly.

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          He’s almost 80…

          It’s one thing to cut a 20 year old slack for how they were raised, but at some point it’s fine to judge them for never working on themselves.

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            He was surrounded by sycophants such that he never had to work on himself. There was always someone to blame, and someone to fix up the trail of carnage.

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            How you’re raised affects you’re entire life, this would be especially true for someone who’s never needed to even wipe their own ass. It’s okay to dislike someone and how they are, have compassion for the misfortune (all the money in the world doesn’t make up for missed parental love and attention) that produced such a shitty human being and not have it be a defense of his actions.

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            That’s a fair point.

            Unfortunately most people like Trump don’t work on themselves unless they’re held accountable.

            He made it to nearly 80 before his actions and behavior caught up to him. We’re as much to blame as a society for not only feeding his ego, but electing him president after we all knew he was a rapist.

            So, I still have compassion for the love starved child inside of him. And hope that he’s held accountable, to send all people like him a strong message so that maybe people who looked to him as a role model, will wise up and work on themselves a bit instead of following the Cheeto’s path.

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Oh look at that grave, honey. I wonder who that is? Grass doesn’t seem to grow there and it looks like multiple people have chiseled out the name and filled it… eww is that faeces?

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      Trump has clinically-diagnosable Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He thinks he’s the best at things and brags about associating with the best people. He can only consider himself in his day-to-day decision-making, and only cares about other people to the extent they are useful to him in that moment. He genuinely believes his way of doing things is “perfect.”

      While it’s not unheard of, you really can’t expect someone with NPD to ever change. He will never admit fault, ever, because he has demonstrated he will protect his ego at all costs

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    He just made jokes while in California about Pelosi’s husband being bludgeoned with a hammer by one of his psychopathic followers.

    Just let that one marinate for a few seconds.

    Shitting on American heroes through lack of any understanding of the mere idea of self sacrifice seems a bit unsurprising.

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    Watch now, how all the “patriotic” MAGAts try and defend the disgustingly disrespect to our fallen service men and women.

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      I’ve been having fun with an old friend of mine who has been dragged into the cult. His whole personality is that he’s a veteran. So when something like thisis pointed out, he struggles to find an excuse. It’s been particularly entertaining since january 2020.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      Using and discarding service members for faux-patriotism has been a staple of the GOP for a while now. As is often the case, Trump merely turned up the volume.

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    This doesn’t matter. His supporters won’t hear about it. And if they did, they won’t believe it.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      And if they did believe it, they would resort to the old faithful “I am better than [group of people] so I feel good about myself!”

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      I’d like to know just how many people commenting in this thread have actually read the whole article or just OP’s quote.

      Point being, a lot of people claim to care but not enough to actually invest five minutes to read into something. I can imagine some people saying, “I don’t need to read the article. I already know what it’s going to say based on the headline and I’m going to comment here and tell others what I think”.

      That has nothing to do with your politics other than our politics are now based on headlines and not full journalistic reports.

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        What’s your point here? The summary OP posted does a good job summarizing the article. It feels like you’re trying to imply the article is biased without saying that.

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          I’m not commenting on the article - it’s as a fantastic read that everyone should take five minutes to review.

          I’m saying, don’t call out one group of people for not caring about the facts when no one cares about the facts anymore. Everyone reacts to headlines based on their own biases.

          • Hadriscus
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            I don’t know, I did read the article. And it’s a few times worse than the quote above implies

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    Yet despite all of this, everyone that I have met who outwardly advertises their veteran status is full on 100% in love with Trump.

    It’s almost like the battered woman who says she loves her man right up until he murders her.

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      There are plenty of veterans out there that don’t advertise it because it’s not a core piece of their identity. Of course the 'Murica veterans are going to be more frequently Trumpers. My uncle was in the Vietnam War, but he’s only talked about it a handful of times when asked. He despises Trump, not because he’s a vet, but because of who Trump is.

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    The more information that comes out about Trump, the more clear it is that he’s a full-on psychopath. I don’t think it’s possible for normal human beings to understand the depths of his depravity.

    Despite the first hand evidence that Trump loathes those who gave life and limb for our country, I expect that a majority of current and ex-military will still vote for him.

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      I agree. It’s a actually impossible to imagine him doing anything just because it’s the right thing to do.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      Or stayed on the job once it became obvious from being in on the planning meetings. Fuck all of them and all of their oh, don’t worry, we have adults in the room bullshit.

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    Trump talks like a 19 year old poser antifa edge lord about the US military and yet look at the people who voted him in.

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      antifa

      That stands for anti fascist. As such, it’s strange that you think Trump is anti facism. He tried to overturn an election. Just one of many examples.

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        I think the word got used like any generic epithet, like “millennial” or whatever. “Antifa” has been corrupted by right wing propagandists to mean looting anarchist, leftist, vandal, etc.

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        Trump talks like

        Oops! Looks like you missed the very beginning of the comment where it’s made clear this is a metaphor, not an actual literal description. It’s ok, it happens to the best of us. But in the future, if you think a comment says something outlandish like “Trump is antifa”, maybe go back and reread it?

    • huxley75@lemmy.world
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      Poser Nazi edgelord. Trump isn’t ANTIFA - he openly acknowledges and eggs on fascists. Not the opposite.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        He blamed antifa for violence in summer of 2020. His supporters posted online that antifa was coming to get them in their small towns. Antifa is their boogeyman.

      • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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        Nazi edgelords don’t shit talk the military, which is the important point of their comparison to a “leftist” edgelord

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      I think he may be a lot more shallow, lets say a 3rd grader that never learnt to be compassionate and empathetic. More dangerous even.

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    I’m wondering how long will trump last in Vietnam if his “bone spurt” didn’t save him from the draft.

    Sure, he could still be assigned away from the fighting, but still I would like to know how he’d do.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.

    A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action.

    The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.

    Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things.

    “Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story.

    Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain.


    The original article contains 1,311 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!