Discussion: READ: Kelly's Full Remarks Defending Trump's Call To Military Widow

We don’t look down upon those of you who that haven’t served. In fact, in a way we’re a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our service men and women do — not for any other reason than they love this country. So just think of that.

WTF was that? Does Donnie get two scoops of sorry for draft dodging?

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He’s a misogynist!
He’s a racist!
He’s a misogynist!
He’s a racist!

STOP! You’re both right!

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It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax, as Atrios used to say.

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Personally, I revere the folks who collect the trash and garbage and treat the water we drink and sewage we create - priorities.

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This was all extremely disquieting. All of it.

The tone of it validates, rather than puts to rest, the concerns about civilian control and subordination raised by Trump having surrounded himself with so many generals. He appoints himself the arbiter of what is and is not sacred and what may and may not be discussed, based on his experiences dealing with the deaths of those under his command and the loss of his son and then dishonors them, and himself, by going out of his way to suggest that the wretched civilians, and in particular, the politicians, are unworthy of their sacrifice.

Hating Congress and politicians is a fine old American tradition, a beloved hobby of civilian and soldier alike going back to the Revolution. But Kelly here assumes the mantle of final arbiter of propriety based on his own very real sacrifices to render his pronouncement on the absolute sanctity of military sacrifice beyond contest. Having donned the vestments, he pronounces the members of the military as all being the very best people in America, by definition, and then juxtoposes them with the contemptible (and identifiably Democratic and apparently black) members of Congress. And this idea that all virtue resides in the military, and imbues those in the military with virtue unattainable by the villainous politicians and wretched, presumptuous civilians and has a very specific, and worrisome historical antecedent in Washington history.

It harks back to the toxic politicization of Army of the Potomac’s officer’s corps (and that fish rotted from the McClellan-shaped head). It reeks of the frequent expressions of contempt for Lincoln, the expressions of disgust for the Republican Party and its antislavery position, and the loose talk of overthrowing the government and installing a dictator that occupied far too much of their time in camp.

There is a powerful suggestion here that the cardinal virtue of the American officer’s corps, subordination to civilian authority, has become far too focused on the person of the president rather than on the government of as a whole.

This was a deeply disturbing, and profoundly unwholesome, diatribe. And yet another testament to the way that Trump poisons everything he touches. Because no general officer who is still technically subject to recall has any business talking this way in public, no matter what his civilian job might be. At least not unless that job was the result of him first getting himself elected to high office.

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Is this the same John Kelly who, while Secretary of Homeland Security, declared he saw no problem with the son-in-law creating, from the Russian embassy, a secret channel to the Kremlin–a communication channel that would be impervious to US Intelligence? That John Kelly? The one wearing the brown lipstick?

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Totally. That’s the most disturbing part of a very disturbing event. Personal loyalty to a president by a general is unAmerican and scary as fuck.

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Right? And that goes for any president, but to the person of the Defiler in Chief specifically? What the everfucking fuck?

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Excuse me, but I don’t want it to happen, especially at the hands of a “fucking moron”.

What is the exit strategy here? How many more of our sons and daughters do you figure’ll die?

Yours wasn’t enough? Now you want mine?

Why?

What’s the exit strategy here?

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Pardon flicking me?

You want more of my tax dollars to go to converting another country to the values of my freaking government.

I — and I thought conservatives — don’t allow government to do that here. But I’m to pay to subsidize government to do it there?

Has every Republican lost their mind???

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Good observations here.

Watching this on video, I was struck, however, by something in the other direction – namely the omission of how this lowering of the bar for public discourse and tendency toward disrespect is directly due to the GOP’s longstanding smearing of everything that promotes democracy and protects ordinary Americans.

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Let’s be honest.

To protect the political party in power.

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On our dime, truth be told. Lots of dimes to expensive contractors provided by… oh, look… billionaires, but then I guess that’s their money.

Genius businessmen and all.

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Interesting. The difference between what you “hear” when you read and what you hear when you listen is always striking to me.

But yes, one thing that is very clear is that at some point, likely very early, he developed a deep, blinding, and stereotype-filled loathing of the Democratic Party.

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my question for the parents of the young girl who idolizes tRUmp as some sort of fine president, would you leave her alone in the room with tRUmp for any period of time? Would you leave her alone in the room with tRUmp if she was, say, 9 or 10 years older than she is now?

if you said yes, I would seriously question your approach to parenting

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Oh, I didn’t mean to imply I heard that in his remarks (though you’re right about the difference between transcript and video). I mean I was struck as in “it occurs to me”. Everything he lists off – whether in transcript or in video – the GOP has actively worked to degrade it. The most recent example of that being Trump announcing to the nation that he is the first president to really make an effort at reaching out to gold-star families. All other presidents barely even did anything.

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so you all Believed the propaganda about. what “a good guy Kelly is”. lol. he’s a militant Irish cop from Boston with all the bells and whistles of that type of MAN. Suffers from the God syndrome. our Country is filled with old white guys who think its their way or the highway. thats how we got Trump. The ancient problems of yore will go on as long as this incurable type of person roams our land. For sure

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“That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day.”

A transcript doesn’t convey the tone of the conversation. Frankly, I am surprised that they even let him do it. Trump is a sociopath, totally devoid of empathy to others. He is incapable to making a phone call like that with any feeling whatsoever. So it could be that Trump did say everything that Kelly says he did (which I doubt) but if he can’t convey it properly, it will be taken as disrespectful.

I also think that Trump has been so polarizing with respect to race that I doubt any person of color would want to hear anything he has to say. He should never have made the call. It’s one thing not do anything, but to do it so badly is 10 times worse.

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Does anyone know if that ‘empty barrel’ was this particular congresswoman? Reading Kelly’s remarks I’ve changed my view on this story somewhat, and think she’s really done a very crass thing.

So when I gave that explanation to our President three days ago, he elected to make phone calls in the cases of four young men who we lost in Niger at the earlier part of this month. But then he said, how do you make these calls?

Is it just me, or does it sound like Kelly just admitted that the President asked how to make these type of calls A FEW DAYS AGO?
And yeah, I thought Kelly was one of the good guys, “keeping us from chaos”, but that stunt at the end where only reporters who had a direct connection to Gold Star families could ask him a question?? That was HIT to press freedoms, pissed me off more than anything… I still am hopeful he’s a good guy, taking one for the team…but that was UGLY.

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