The sad, pathetic spectacle of John Kelly’s critics

WHEN GEN. JOHN KELLY WENT PUBLIC about Trump’s praise for Hitler and his fear of a dictatorial second Trump term, he joined a growing list from former Trump officials who raised the alarm.

He also set off what has become a pathetic, if not predictable, pattern in which a chorus of Trump sycophants obediently rush forward to explain away the alarming revelation and cast doubt on the witness’s credibility.

Here it is Reliable Trump licker Scott Jennings told us that Kelly probably made the whole thing up and that the real Hitlers are on college campuses. Trump apologist Ryan James Girdusky said“Frankly, I, like most Americans, could care less about General Kelly’s farewell tour.”

Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends said of Trump’s praise for Nazi generals: “I can definitely see him saying, ‘It would be great to have German generals who actually do what we ask of them,’ perhaps not fully aware of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis, or whatever.” (Not a parody.)

Trump confidant Mike Davis called Kelly “Gen. Christine Blasey Ford” – get it? Chris Sununu isn’t worried: “We’ve heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it’s kind of ingrained in the mood.” Senator Bill Hagerty, on CNN, downplayed the entire revelation as a personal dispute between two men. Kelly and Trump, he said, “were not a good fit.”

There is something deeply harmful in this routine. These people want you to forget the cumulative weight of the accusations against Trump, especially when those accusations come from his own former employees — including many high-ranking military officers. They do this not because they don’t believe the accusations, but because they know how harmful they can be.

Do you know how we know this? Because the claims made by Kelly and others are supported by what we have seen firsthand over the past nine years.

Should we be skeptical that Trump called soldiers “suckers” and “losers” when he… said so loudly about John McCain?

Should we be skeptical that he praised Hitler’s generals while admiring dictators? eaten with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, to call to action people ‘vermin’, and talk about immigrants ‘poisoning the blood’ of America?

Are we to believe that he bears no responsibility for January 6, when we were all watching him? to call to action a mob and storm the Capitol?

Are we to believe that this is all about a personal feud between Kelly and Trump when so many others have so many similar accounts?

• When Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence told us that “the American people deserve to know that on January 6, President Trump asked me to deny him my oath to the Constitution”?

• Then James Mattis said Trump’s “use of the presidency to destroy confidence in our elections and poison our respect for fellow citizens has been made possible by pseudo-political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles of cowardice”?

• Then Mark Esper said Trump was “unfit for office” and put “himself before the country”?

• When John Bolton warned that “this will be a retaliatory presidency”?

• Then Ty Cobb said Trump’s “conduct and mere existence hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation”?

• When Mark Milley Trump called “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person for this country”?

• When Bill Barr said Trump “wasn’t allowed to be near the Oval Office”?

I have another idea: why not accept the obvious truth staring us in the face? Trump is dangerous and unfit and all the responsible people who served during his last term told us so.

KELLY WAS hesitant to speak publicly about his assessment of Trump. He previously said it wouldn’t even be right to speak out against his former boss.half a day of bouncing.” Trump’s apologists are trying to prove him right. We shouldn’t allow them.

Kelly did the right thing. But it’s not enough. These messages must reach people where they are, especially unengaged voters—not because they aren’t politically powerful (they are), but because they fundamentally matter.

When someone of Kelly’s stature and close association with Trump says the ex-president is a fascist and praised Hitler’s generals, it should send a major shiver through our body politic. If this becomes a half-day story, it will be an indictment on all of us.

We are now in the home phase. Millions of voters are – right now – making a decision. This is the moment when elections are won or lost. Those other former officials now have an obligation to do what Kelly has: come forward and give their candid assessment of Trump.

They should do this not just to defend Kelly, but to make a broader point: that we can, should, and must be honest about the threat Trump poses.

Trump’s defenders want us to doubt what we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. They want us to treat a White House chief of staff confirming that the former president praised Hitler and called members of the military “suckers and losers” as regular campaign fodder—and not as evidence of something fundamentally rotten at the core of their movement . If we allow that, it will be a stain on our politics, akin to electing Trump himself.

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