Tell us something we don't know
John Kelly's revelations aren't shocking, which says more about us than it does about Trump.
Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff has confirmed that every crazy story you’ve heard about Trump insulting and mocking veterans behind their backs is completely true:
John Kelly, Donald Trump's former chief of staff, has released a damning statement claiming the president did call service members who died fighting 'losers and suckers.'
Kelly went on to support separate claims Trump didn't want to include military amputees at a 2018 White House military event, when he allegedly said their presence 'doesn't look good for me.'
In a statement to CNN, Kelly wrote: 'What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’
'A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because "it doesn’t look good for me."
'A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are "losers" and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.'
Kelly served under Trump from 2017 to 2019 and says he directly witnessed many of the claims he now claims he can verify.
He also alleges that his former boss lied about his stance on key issues including abortion, with the 45th president claiming to be staunchly pro-life.
Kelly did not offer further details on the alleged hypocrisy.
Kelly concluded his screed with 'God help us,' suggesting he is none too-pleased about the thought of a second term in office for Trump.
And here’s how this is being covered on the Drudge Report as of this writing:
If you squint you can see the headline, right under another small headline about Trump attending his trial for corporate fraud. (Don’t get too excited: it’s a civil trial which could result in his companies being wound down, but it won’t put him behind bars.) At least it merited a photo. Any mention of the former President of the United States trashing the judge on the courthouse steps is long gone.
If you’re like me and old enough to remember when Yahoo! was still a human-curated list of links to websites about different subjects instead of a search engine1 you might also recall Drudge starting out as a right-leaning news aggregator. But it’s not like the website has shied away from damning news stories about Trump in recent years.
And it’s not just Drudge: I checked some other news websites this morning and aside from CNN, to which John Kelly released his damning statement, it doesn’t seem to be getting much attention at all. (It is the top story on the US version of the Daily Mail website, proving that the Daily Mail is the world’s newspaper of record, but you already knew that.)
On Earth-2, the President’s former Chief of Staff confirming damning reports about his ex-boss, as said ex-boss is running to win back his old job and has a legitimate chance of winning, would be the story of the day.
Here on this planet, it’s being ignored. Maybe that’s because no one cares about CNN anymore. Or, more likely, it’s because Kelly is simply confirming that Trump behaves in private the same way he acts in public.
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