Regarding John Kelly

Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

[...]

That is the single most poignant moment in Jeffrey Goldberg’s soon-to-be-legendary piece in The Atlantic. Except for the likely instant intervention of the Secret Service, I don’t know how John Kelly didn’t flatten the vulgar talking yam right there at Arlington. But John Kelly didn’t do that. In fact he stayed with the administration*, eventually taking a promotion from Secretary of Homeland Security to White House chief-of-staff. Kelly became the face of cruel and stupid immigration policies at the country’s southern border, defended the president* when the latter made similarly insensitive remarks to a Gold Star widow in Florida and then called Rep. Fredrica Wilson “an empty barrel” when she called the president* out for it, spoke warmly of Robert E. Lee and the armies of the Confederate States of America, and ultimately left the administration* to take a job with a firm that runs the largest detention facility in which “unaccompanied” migrant minor children are held. And John Kelly did all of this after the president* made those graceless remarks about Kelly’s son while standing aside the young man’s grave.

  Charles P Pierce

All that.

Yes, the president*’s remarks about all the “losers” and “suckers” who died in Belleau Wood are grotesque—although, to be fair, he isn’t entirely wrong about World War I. Yes, the idea that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago avoided a trip to a military cemetery in France because rain might have damaged his coiffure is both sad and hilarious. Yes, his obsession with John McCain, which continues to this day, apparently, is the product of a bent and twisted mind. And yes, his apparent revulsion at the sight of wounded veterans is unbecoming in a president of the United States. All of these things are true. But all of these things were true at the time. Kelly and the president* went to Arlington five months into the president*’s term. Kelly worked for the president* for another year and, since then, until just now, he has maintained his silence as the president*’s assault on the rule of law and the Constitution only intensified. All of them—Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis—have been Good Soldiers rather than patriots. (Mattis did call the president* a threat to the Constitution in another Goldberg piece that ran in June. Of this year. Barn. Lock. Missing horse.)

Yep.

I do not expect political courage from the likes of Mitch McConnell or Ben Sasse. I expect it of men who have demonstrated physical courage under extreme circumstances, but never has the difference between battlefield courage and political courage been more clearly drawn. I am glad that Goldberg has written this piece. I’m glad it’s out in the world. I’m glad that people are outraged about it, and I’m glad for whatever role it may ultimately play in lifting this scourge from the land. But I am sorry, and angry, that it has come to this, in 2020, when the vandals are still on a rampage that seems as though it can only end in annihilation.