kelly, john Gen cos

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one of the aDULTS?

oct surprise target traitor

flag officers historically loathe to be involved in partisan politics, Milley stepped up 1st;

===

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AN 10 24

"You said the other day, quote, I guarantee John Kelly talked to somebody on Kamala Harris' campaign beforehand, before he did this interview," Tapper noted during a CNN interview with Vance that aired on Sunday.

Tapper said he had "spoken with people in John Kelly's circle, and I've spoken with people in the Kamala Harris campaign."

"They say there's been no communication the entire time," the CNN host explained. "So where did that come from?"

"Oh, I'm highly skeptical of that, Jake," Vance replied. "You know the way that these attacks work."

"So you made it up," Tapper noted.

"No, I said that the American media and the American Democratic Party apparatus works a certain way," Vance fired back. "And it's interesting, we've now spent, Jake, three minutes talking about John Kelly."

"If it is true that he never spoke with anyone in Kamala Harris' orbit, I'm happy to apologize to John Kelly for misstating how he delivered this news to the Atlantic Magazine," he added.

Watch the video below from CNN or at the link.

---

mma

John Kelly warned that Trump is a fascist. Right-wing media absurdly claim by citing him that Kamala Harris is inspiring “assassins.”

PJ Media: “If you keep calling someone Hitler, eventually, someone will feel morally obligated to take action”

Written by Charis Hoard

Published 10/25/24 mma

This week, retired Gen. John Kelly -- former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump -- asserted in interviews with The New York Times that he believed Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist” and that he has previously praised Adolf Hitler.

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed the sentiments during her town hall on Wednesday night when asked about Kelly’s comments, sending right-wing media into an uproar.

In a desperate attempt to spin the serious remarks about Trump into a negative story about Harris, right-wing media figures attacked the Democratic nominee, calling her hypocritical, claiming that she was repeating unsubstantiated claims, and suggesting she’s inciting violence against Trump by agreeing with Kelly’s comments.

• ## Trump’s former chief of staff said Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist,” which Harris echoed during her town hall

• • Kelly claimed that Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist” in a series of interviews with The New York Times. Kelly also claimed that Trump has previously expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, and he told The Atlantic that Trump had previously said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” The New York Times, [10/22/24; The Atlantic, 10/22/24]

• • During a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, Harris echoed Kelly’s statement, agreeing that Trump “is a fascist.” Harris asserted multiple times that she believes Trump is a fascist, saying that, if reelected, Trump would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.” The Associated Press, [10/24/24]

• • In response to her comments, Trump attacked Harris on Truth Social, calling her a “Threat to Democracy” who is “increasingly raising her rhetoric” against him.Trump: “Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind. She is a Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States — And her Polling so indicates!” Truth Social, [10/23/24]

• ## Right-wing media attacked Harris for echoing Kelly’s remarks, calling her hypocritical, claiming that she was repeating “unsubstantiated claims,” and saying she was inciting violence against Trump

• • Townhall's site Twitchy suggested Harris is hypocritical for agreeing with Kelly after previously criticizing him.Twitchy referenced a 2019 post from Harris where she asserted that Kelly “was the architect of the Trump Administration's cruel child separation policy,” saying that Democrats “really turned on a dime when it comes to trusting Kelly’s integrity.” Twitchy, [10/24/24; Twitter/X, 5/3/19]

• • Conservative writer John Solomon claimed that Harris had previously “declared John Kelly had an ‘inability to speak truth to power,’” and claimed that “reporters who covered Harris’ attack conference had an obligation to report this.” Twitter/X, [10/24/24]

• • PJ Media posted a piece titled “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Get Trump Shot at Again.” The piece noted, “If you keep calling someone Hitler, eventually, someone will feel morally obligated to take action. This isn’t just innocent hyperbole: it’s a calculated narrative meant to provoke. For years, Democrats and media figures have portrayed Trump not as a political adversary but as an existential threat. That’s how we’ve ended up with two assassination attempts within just nine weeks.” PJ Media, [10/24/24]

• • The Washington Free Beacon claimed that Harris wrongly characterized Trump as “increasingly unstable and unfit to serve,” asserting that she was pushing “fear” as a campaign message.The article also highlighted Harris’ previous criticisms of Kelly, saying she “once denounced [him] as ‘cruel’ and ‘unethical.’” The Washington Free Beacon, [10/24/24]

• • The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway posted that Harris’ closing argument is: “We need Trump's cholesterol numbers and he has secretly told John Kelly evil things he's never told anyone else.” Hemingway: “Trump closing argument: ‘I'll fight for you and do for you what I did before on the economy, foreign policy, border, etc.’ Harris: ‘We need Trump's cholesterol numbers and he has secretly told John Kelly evil things he's never told anyone else.’” Twitter/X, [10/23/24]

• • Right-wing radio host Bo Snerdley asserted that “Kelly is a fired employee. Who apparently bears a grudge. Let's see how many ‘fired’ or former employees of Ms. Harris - and there are many - get quoted in these final two weeks.” Twitter/X, [10/23/24]

• • Jesse Kelly Showhost Jesse Kelly claimed that the Harris campaign “has a billion dollars, an army of consultants, months to work on a plan,” but her “October surprise” is a sign that “this campaign ain’t gonna make it.” Kelly claimed that the surprise was “the same ‘Trump is Hitler!’ drivel we’ve been hearing since he came down the escalator in 2015.” Twitter/X, [10/23/24]

• • Conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly called Harris “desperate” and said she is repeating “unsubstantiated claims by John Kelly and Trump's alleged desire to hire generals like Hitler had.” Kelly also called Harris’ comments “desperate and disgusting conduct not just by a presidential candidate but a sitting vice president,” adding “This is not how winners behave.” Twitter/X, [10/23/24]

• • The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross asserted that Harris is “currently touting John Kelly, whom she called ‘unethical’ a few years ago.”Twitter/X, [10/23/24]

• • Fox host Sean Hannity linked Harris’ comment to past assassination attempts against Trump, seemingly suggesting that Harris is encouraging violence against Trump by echoing Kelly’s comments. Hannity: “Kamala Harris said ‘Donald Trump wants generals like Hitler’ tonight and apparently said earlier, you know, that he’s a fascist. The man now — we had two would-be assassins. … This rhetoric is getting so over the top, and it seems like that’s all they’re doubling down and tripling down on. And I would expect we’re probably gonna have an October surprise, maybe five a day, every day, for the next 13 days.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [10/23/24]

• • Former GOP presidential candidate and Fox Nation host Vivek Ramaswamy called on Harris to “step up and apologize” for “stoking this culture of political violence that was shameful.”Fox News, *Hannity*, [10/23/24]

• • America Reports' John Roberts claimed that Harris’ closing argument for her campaign is improperly focused on Trump. Roberts: “We are seeing Kamala Harris' closing argument for the last 13 days is ‘Trump is a fascist, he embraces Hitler and wants to have his generals.’ She's not saying to young Black men across the country: ‘Here's what I'm going to do for you economically.’” Media Matters, [10/23/24]

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mma

After former White House chief of staff John Kelly criticized Donald Trump, right-wing commentators linked to the former president have called Kelly a “traitor,” a “seditionist,” “compromised,” a “threat to America,” and treasonous.

In a trio of audio interviews with The New York Times, Kelly “said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist,” and “discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’”

Reflecting the chaotic nature of the Trump White House, numerous former staffers have supported and bolstered Kelly’s warnings and recollections. Right-wing media figures, however, have dismissed, ignored, or cast doubt on his remarks.

They have also descended into retributive rhetoric, saying Kelly is a “traitor,” treasonous, and seditious. Such language echoes the words of Trump himself, who has promised to carry out a retribution tour if he’s elected president.

The following are several right-wing commentators who have connections with Trump who have lashed out at Kelly:

Sebastian Gorka is a radio host who pushes conspiracy theories and extreme rhetoric. He is a former Trump White House adviser. Gorka has interviewed and been praised by Trump.

During an interview with Salem Media Group colleague Mike Gallagher, Gorka said: “I've got a message for John Kelly. You're no Marine, John Kelly. You're a seditionist. You're a traitor. You tried to push me and Steve Bannon out.” He added: “I spit on his career because he is not a Marine and people like him are the threat to America.”

Peter Navarro is an election denier and Project 2025 author. He is also a Trump campaign surrogate who was recently released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for defying a congressional subpoena.

He wrote an opinion piece attacking Kelly with the headline “Trump’s four-star bully chief of staff John Kelly was a traitor within.”

Mike Flynn is a right-wing commentator who spreads conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric. He is also a Trump ally and former national security adviser who left in disgrace. Trump told Flynn last year that Flynn would return to the White House if he wins. And CNN reported that “multiple foreign diplomats tell CNN they see Flynn as someone who will have influence if the former president retakes the White House and have privately speculated that he could be tapped for another high-level position if that comes to pass.”

He endorsed a post by conspiracy theorist Buzz Patterson that claimed: “Flag officers who perpetuate lies and fraud, like Kelly, Milley, Austin, Brennan, etc, have violated their oaths and, in some cases, the law. They are treasonous and, dare I say, the ‘enemy within.’ Yes, I said that.”

Flynn responded to Patterson: “What Buzz said!”

Tony Shaffer is a right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist. He advised Trump and is part of his Veterans and Military Families for Trump coalition.

During an interview, Shaffer said of Kelly: “I think he's compromised. He was part of — I'll be very clear. He was compromised when he was chief of staff to Trump.” As evidence of him being compromised, Shaffer claimed that Kelly wouldn’t let him talk to the president about concerns over the FBI being corrupted. He added on social media that “people like John Kelly were the inside men of the whole effort to conduct a coup to remove President Trump.”

//

Fox anchor Harris Faulkner on labeling Trump fascist: “This is hate speech now”

10/25/24

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attack by lindsey g

an 10 24

Former White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly was relentlessly attacked by Donald Trump supporters following a bombshell New York Times interview in which Kelly revealed that Trump, as president, openly praised Adolf Hitler and criticized U.S. military leaders for not being more like Hitler's generals in Nazi Germany.

Kelly told the Times that Trump, ideologically, fit the definition of "fascism." Meanwhile, Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Trump as "fascist to the core" during an interview for veteran reporter Bob Woodward's new book "War."

GOP strategist Sarah Longwell, a Never Trump conservative who is supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, slammed MAGA attacks on Kelly as "pathetic, if not predictable" in a scathing article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 23. And she isn't the only one who is defending Kelly.

READ MORE:**Report reveals some MAGA fans 'ready to take on a civil war' if Trump loses**

According to Politico's Meridith McGraw and NBC News' Megan Lebowitz, 13 former Trump Administration officials have signed an open letter standing up for the former White House chief of staff.

Those who signed the letter, McGraw reports, include former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham; Olivia Troye, a former national security aide to former Vice President Mike Pence; former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci; and former Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah Griffin.

Miles Taylor and Elizabeth Neumann, both alumni of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), signed the letter as well —as did Kevin Carroll, an ex-senior counselor for Kelly.

Troye and Grisham are among the conservative Republicans who endorsed Harris when they spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

READ MORE:**'Rotten at the core': GOP strategist slams MAGA’s 'pathetic' attacks on John Kelly**

McGraw notes, "The letter comes as Harris is leaning into her closing argument that Trump is a threat to democracy and poses a distinct threat if he's reelected. It's a message she and her campaign believes resonates with independents and Trump-weary Republicans who are concerned about the former president returning to the Oval Office."

During a town hall event for CNN on Wednesday night, October 23, Harris described Kelly's revelations as "a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room." And the vice president warned that in a second Trump term as president, "people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions."

The letter reads, "We applaud General Kelly for highlighting in stark details the danger of a second Trump term. Like General Kelly, we did not take the decision to come forward lightly. We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments…. Everyone should heed General Kelly's warning."

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Jesse Watters calls Gen. John Kelly's accusations that Donald Trump admired Nazis a “hoax” 10/23/24 MMA

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an 10 24

Fox News host and anchor Harris Faulkner quickly shut down a Democratic guest as soon as he brought up the name of Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, who this week declared the ex-president meets the “definition a ‘fascist.'”

General Kelly is far from alone.

Last week, former Trump Chairman of the Join Chiefs, General Mark Milley, said he believes Donald Trump is “fascist to the core,” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”

And on Wednesday, former Trump Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, The Washington Post reported, agreed with General Kelly that Trump meets the definition of a fascist.

READ MORE: ‘Shameful’: Naval Academy Cancels Authoritarianism Lecture After ‘MAGA Pressure’*

Esper “said in a CNN interview that he was reluctant to use the same label that Kelly used in a New York Times interview published Tuesday. But Esper then noted that Kelly had looked up the definition of a fascist in the interview — and Esper urged ‘everybody’ to do the same.”

“Ask yourself, does he fall into those categories?” Esper asked. “And it’s hard to say that he doesn’t when you kind of look at those terms. He certainly has those inclinations, and I think it’s something we should be wary about.”

In addition to declaring the ex-president meets the definition of a fascist, General Kelly shared more disturbing details about his time with Trump.

“Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,’” The Associated Press reported Wednesday. “The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.”

Trump allegedly was very specific in his praise of Hitler and his regime.

“In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ‘German generals,’ Kelly would ask if he meant ‘Bismarck’s generals,’ referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ‘Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,’ Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’”

The AP also reported, “Kelly added that Trump often fumed at any attempt to constrain his power, and that ‘he would love to be’ a dictator,” and told The Times: “He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Thursday afternoon, Fox’s Harris Faulkner stopped her guest from sharing those allegations on-air.

READ MORE: ‘Within Two Seconds’: Trump Vows to Fire Special Counsel Jack Smith if Elected President

“It’s very difficult for them. They hear all this negative, both sides, and they’re tuning it out, so how do you break through?” a Democratic guest told Faulkner. “What I think is telling is that you have someone like President Barack Obama going and stumping for his candidate where on Donald Trump’s side, you don’t see George W. Bush, you don’t see Michael Pence or leading Republicans doing that, and I think that’s a glaring thing that will come evident.”

“His former chief of staff, John Kelly, coming out —” he said before Harris interjected.

“Alright,” she declared, before her guest continued: “with these accusations —”

“You know what,” Faulkner said, talking over her guest. “I’m not going to go down that road.”

“She used the backdrop of the Naval Observatory,” Faulkner said, “to bring up some some items that were years old and without much time left, I would love for us to go into it…”

Rather than allowing her guests to continue on that topic, she called for their last quick thoughts.

Faulkner closed by asking, “I just want to know, where’s the joy? Because he’s dancing and she’s no longer joyful. Find the joy.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

===

mma

October 23, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Bring us to probably the most controversial thing that's happened over the last 24 hours, arguably the October surprise that John Kelly and General Mattis are authoring.

KAYLEIGH MCENANCY (GUEST CO-HOST): Yeah. So this — I heard this overnight. So this is The Atlantic. It's Jeffrey Goldberg, and here's the headlines from The Atlantic. Trump: "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had", and you can see the subtitle there, the Republican nominees, preoccupation with dictators, and it goes on.

When I saw this, first, they talk about a meeting with the Guillén family. The Guillén family tragically lost their sister, lost their daughter. She served our country honorably. And they characterize a meeting, one in which I was in. I was not in this December meeting they speak of, but a meeting with this family.

And here's what the sister said about this story. Wow. I don't appreciate how you all are exploiting my sister's death for politics. Hurtful, deceitful. The important changes she made for servicemembers, and indeed she did. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family and Vanessa.

I was in that July meeting. That was undoubtedly the case. But the reason my antennas went up last night when I saw the name Jeffrey Goldberg is because I was on a tarmac in September of 2020, and a story popped from him in the Atlantic, and it was the suckers and losers story we have all heard. Within hours, I was able to collect more than a dozen individuals, several who several who were firsthand sources saying that never happened.

Zach Fuentes, who was an aide of John Kelly, came out and said that never happened. We found contemporaneous documents disputing the reporter who said Trump did not go to the cemetery not because of a bad weather call. John Bolton's book disputes that. We found a contemporaneous document to dispute that. My point is, this is based on 4 anonymous sources.

KILMEADE: Mhmm.

MCENANY: 2 weeks before an election, disputed by people on the record, and yet it led a CBS news broadcast. What a shame. What a shame.

KILMEADE: Did they include your portion? Did they include?

MCENANY: No. They never reached out to me. I was in that first meeting. Never reached out to me. But I will say this quickly. Donald Trump, I've never seen him more downtrodden than when the suckers and losers story came out.

He'd normally stuff came out of his about his finances, fake stories. He didn't care. He was devastated by that story. I remember him saying, what kind of monster would ever say words like that? This is shameful reporting from the Atlantic, in my opinion.

LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): Well, to the former president's point as well, he said when asked about this, he goes, just think about this logically. He goes, I'm in a cemetery surrounded by generals. He goes, why would I — why would I say he said, one of them would deck me in the face over something like — he goes, why would I say something? It just logically does not make sense to say that comment in the cemetery surrounded by generals. Absolutely.

KILMEADE: I have — the opinion on this, I saw this coming. You know I've said this for about for about a year. Yeah.

JONES: You did call this.

KILMEADE: So I read HR McMaster's book. I thought that was gonna be it. I find him unbelievably insightful and smart. I read his book. You know what he did as national security adviser?

He spent the whole time dealing with Mattis and Kelly, who I also like and have huge respect for, who didn't like the president, thought he was incompetent and not capable of doing the job, and they thought it was his their job to rein him in. McMaster said, even though he's a 3 star, telling 4 stars, and said, that's — we're civilians now. That's not your job. Your job is not to reign in the president. Your job is give him the best advice possible and do what he said.

Play this out. So if your general, who's your chief of staff, and your secretary of defense is not doing what you say on an everyday basis, he's like, you know, I'd love I could see him going, I love generals that listen. That would be great.

And he's also from a world where his company is huge, but it's a family company. So when he asked Eric or somebody to do something, they do it. It's not even publicly traded. He doesn't have board members.

All of a sudden, now he's like, do this. What do you mean you can't do it? Do this. What do you mean you can't do it? What do you mean I'm not allowed to do it?

And after a while, while being investigated, there were probably times we topped off. Wouldn't it be great if generals actually listen? Right. Can you imagine if some people listened to the commander-in-chief? I could absolutely see that happening.

And why and they know it in context, but they said he could win. I'm gonna stop him.

DOOCY: And so The Atlantic is getting a lot of publicity for this particular article, you know, and it's getting a lot of publicity because of the Hitler comment, which the Trump campaign says he never said that, and also the cost of the funeral because during the meeting you were at, for with, the family of Vanessa Guillén, he said, how much is it gonna cost? I you know, and her lawyer said the family lawyer said, well, the military is gonna take care of it. And he said, well, if there's a problem, let me know. I will financially pay for it.

And they said the things that he said afterwards never happened as well.

MCENANY Well, another story. And to your point, Brian, no new wars on President Trump's watch. So I think the results kinda speak for themselves.

KILMEADE: What is all -- when you say and done. You, you find out who got the military vote. And you find out maybe he doesn't get the general vote, but the people that serve, he's got their vote.

MCENANY: Absolutely.

JONES: They punish people below them, these four stars, for less than what they've done to Donald Trump. The insubordination that they coordinated --

KILMEADE: -- all the critical of Trump but not Biden, who authored of the worst disaster in the military

JONES: Well not just that. He commissioned the whole white supremacist report that came up fraudulent at the end of the day. So doesn't have much credibility in the military.

===

Fox News' Bret Baier downplays Trump's former chief-of-staff saying the former president is a fascist who praised Hitler

10/23/24 mma

===

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mma

October 22, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight

ROB SCHMITT: (HOST): I want to just read to you what may indeed be one of the October surprises in this election, which is a piece from The Atlantic that has just come out -- just come out today and is really just starting to explode on X as we speak. The title of this piece is, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." They're claiming that as a quote from Donald Trump.

And in it, at a time when Trump is up 11 points with Hispanic voters, something that I think threatens Kamala Harris in every single swing state and could decimate her chances at the White House, comes the absolutely perfect story from The Atlantic to try and — to cut that back, which is a claim from this article that after a Hispanic soldier was killed in action, Trump had promised to pay for the funeral and got a bill for something like $60,000. And this article claims that Trump said — he said it doesn't cost $60,000 to bury a f-ing Mexican. So this is from the Atlantic. And this is, I mean, we've heard how they've claimed that he talks about, you know, troops in action and our fallen heroes. I want to get your reaction to this one.

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (GUEST): Look, it's — now they're pulling out all the stops, right? So they know they're losing, so they're going to throw everything up on the wall. Doesn't matter if it's a lie. And I'm sure that these are all just bald-faced lies. And so anything to try to gin up some kind of controversy, anything to gin up that somehow he hates Hispanics. And I can tell you, you know, I've known Donald Trump for over eight years, close to ten years, and, you know, there's not a racist bone in his body. He loves America. He loves Americans. And Americans means all Americans, including Hispanics. So again, it's a bunch of hooey and again, more made up stuff. And again, just to hurt his chances.

SCHMITT: Yeah. And just — and I just saw a tweet from one of the sources that was used in the article was, it was somebody from, from the staff who said he was asked by the Atlantic if he heard the comment, and his response to the Atlantic was Trump did not say that. And in the article they quoted him as saying, I didn't hear Trump say that. So right there, you just — you see that they lie, they know how to lie. And this — you could not have created a better stony at a time when he's crushing it with the Hispanic community. How do we make that go away? Oh, here's the perfect story. And who knew they'd figure it out on October 22nd, of all the times?

GIMENEZ: Well, look, there's going to be other stories coming out, I'm sure some more outrageous stuff, and they're just going to keep getting more and more outrageous as they get more and more desperate because they're going to lose. And, you know, what's happening with the problem with them now is that, you know, we don't believe any of the stuff that comes out because, you know, who the sources are. We know they've been lying to us for years and years about Donald Trump.

SCHMITT: Yeah.

GIMENEZ: And so we're not going to believe — it's not going to help them. Actually, it may actually help Donald Trump.

SCHMITT: Right.

GIMENEZ: In a way because he said, oh, more lies about him. Yeah. We're going to show you and we're going to elect Donald Trump.

SCHMITT: We all remember the suckers and losers and how ridiculous that one was. And it just — it didn't make any sense. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would somebody say that in front of — nobody would ever say that. Somebody that had paid for so many funerals for soldiers over the years. So yeah, I got —

GIMENEZ: What did he say say? That I need Nazi generals? They lost the war.

SCHMITT: Yeah, exactly. Congressman —

GIMENEZ: Why would I want them?

SCHMITT: Exactly. So it doesn't make any sense at all.

//

1. ### The story of Trump insulting service members was confirmed by Trump's own chief of staff. Right-wing media are still denying it.

07/01/24

2. ### Fox & Friends co-host says that John Kelly and others warning about Trump are guilty of “insubordination”

10/23/24

3. ### Newspaper front pages ignore Trump’s former chief-of-staff saying the former president is a fascist who praised Hitler

10/23/24

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// kirk kashyap

How the Fox bubble is reacting to John Kelly calling Trump a fascist

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/23/24 mma

John Kelly, who once served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, believes that the former president is a “fascist” and would seek to rule as a dictator if he returns to office in November, The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening. The paper published audio of an interview Kelly gave to the Times’ Michael Schmidt in which Kelly explained that Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government” and believes he should have “an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”

Kelly is not the only retired four-star general now sounding the alarm after working at the highest levels of the Trump administration: Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever,” remarks reportedly echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper calls Trump a “threat to democracy,” while former national security adviser John Bolton describes him as “unfit to be president.”

But while Trump’s top national security advisers have largely abandoned him, he retains the zealous loyalty of the counselors he relied on most of all during his presidency: the faithful hosts at Fox News.

### Fox’s Kelly response is silence and spin

Fox’s evening propaganda rotation of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld all completely ignored Kelly’s clarion call on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends, the curvy couch crew avoided the Times story while attacking Kelly and Mattis as defiant, disloyal, partisan figures.

The hosts defended Trump from a report in The Atlantic, also published Tuesday, that Trump had been so fixated on wanting military leaders to truckle to his whims that he once said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

For co-host Brian Kilmeade, such a remark would be a reasonable response to what he characterized as insubordination by the likes of Kelly and Mattis.

“After a while, while being investigated, there were probably times where he [indecipherable] off,” Kilmeade said of Trump. “‘Wouldn't it be great if generals actually listen? Can you imagine if some people listened to the commander in chief?’ I could absolutely see that happening.”

“And they know it in context,” Kilmeade added, “But they said, ‘He could win. I’m going to stop him.’”

“I could absolutely see him going now, ‘You know what, it would be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ knowing that's a third — maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis and whatever,” Kilmeade offered in a second segment.

### Fox guards its viewers from the truth about Trump

Fox’s early handling of Kelly’s warning that his former boss is a fascist is characteristic of the network’s strategy of suppressing unfavorable news about Trump.

Fox typically hides Republican dissent from its audience. Milley’s description of Trump as “fascist to the core” garnered only a handful of mentions on the network. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and the Republican speaker of the House during his tenure, Paul Ryan, both said in exclusive interviews on the network that they would not be supporting his campaign — only for Fox to bury that news as well. When several disaffected Republicans spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, Fox did not air a secondof any of their speeches.

The network’s stars turned other prominent Republican Trump critics, like former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, into political punching bags, helping the former president drive them from office.

By helping Trump control the narratives his supporters are exposed to, Fox maintains his iron grip on the GOP base — and thus on the pliant Republican leadership. And next month, if the election is close and Trump declares victory, the right-wing information bubble Fox helps maintain will become even more crucial to his strategy.

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an 10 24

A new bombshell report describes how, during his first administration, former President Donald Trump longed for the same kind of absolute dictatorial power that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler enjoyed.

In a Tuesday report, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about his conversations with General John Kelly (Trump's former Department of Homeland Security secretary and ex-White House chief of staff) who described how Trump harbored a peculiarly disdain for the military. He specifically lamented that he lacked the same kind of unwavering support from American military leadership that Hitler had during his reign.

"I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," Trump said, according to unnamed White House aides speaking confidentially to the Atlantic. "People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders."

READ MORE:This Trump trait makes him 'even more dangerous' than Hitler and Mussolini: ex-Dem senator

Kelly told Goldberg that he had to gently remind Trump that there were multiple occasions in which Hitler's generals tried and failed to assassinate him, like on July 20, 1944. And of course, Hitler's generals ultimately lost World War II, with the ones who weren't killed dying in a bunker with Hitler as Stalin's army razed Berlin.

The four-star Marine general also frequently had to educate Trump about the basics of both military structure and military history. When Trump asked him who the "good guys" were in World War I, Kelly told him that it's customary for U.S. presidents to consider any nation allied with the United States to be the protagonists in any foreign war. He also had to caution him from praising Hitler, even when not referencing the Holocaust.

"He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’" Kelly told CNN's Jim Sciutto in an interview for his book. “[H]e said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world... I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”

As an illustration of how he feels about the U.S. military, the article described how incensed the former president was that the family of Pvt. Vanessa Guillén — who was beaten to death by her boyfriend at age 20 while stationed at Fort Hood in Texas — sent the White House the bill for their daughter's funeral after Trump specifically asked them to at a White House meeting. Her funeral cost approximately $60,000. Unnamed participants in a 2020 meeting confided to Goldberg that the ex-president became irate after hearing about the cost.

READ MORE:'Why he's going to lose again': Trump slammed for keynoting event filled with 'Nazi-linked groups'

"Trump became angry," Goldberg wrote, adding that Trump reportedly said “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—ing Mexican!" He then told Mark Meadows, who was his chief of staff at the time, “Don’t pay it!”

“Can you believe it?” he then said, according to meeting attendees. “F—ing people, trying to rip me off.”

The report comes as the ex-president's campaign rhetoric has taken a decidedly more authoritarian tone. Sidney Blumenthal, who was an advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, recently wrote in the Guardian about how Trump is echoing Hitler in calling Democrats "the enemy from within," and his claims that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country."

Click here to read Goldberg's full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

READ MORE:'Modern-day Hitler': Experts sound alarm over Trump heaping praise on 'autocrat' Orbán

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caliburn pic

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/19/1879972/-Florida-prison-camp-for-kids-emptied-out-just-weeks-ago-could-reopen-as-soon-as-October

1020 an

lackeys from the Trump administration aren't one teensy bit concerned about the mess they'll leave behind should their impeached president lose reelection in just under 20 days. Oh no, the fact that they're all on a superspreader tour of the country is proof of that. Like their boss, what they're concerned about instead are their own sorry asses.}:

Trump staffers, The Washington Post reports, "are hoping the Trump presidency isn't a disqualifying blemish on their resumes or Google footprint as the door revolves the other way and they seek to land, once again, in the private sector." Considering the kinds of horrific crimes this administration has carried out, they should be grateful that not being able to find a six-figure job at a fancy D.C. firm is the worst thing they have to worry about.

Some of former officials have already gotten a taste of a post-Trump life. For former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, "[t]here's been no cushy landing on K Street or high-profile consultancy at a major lobbying or public relations firm," The Postsaid. While he published a book about being a taxpayer-funded liar, it flopped. Another one of his post-Trump jobs wasn't too pretty either—no really, he wore some hideous dollar store piñata for the 28th season of Dancing with the Stars, where he was the sixth contestant eliminated.

But just because Sean "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period!" Spicer had trouble doesn't mean other former Trump officials have had the same experience. "Ex-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is president of the Michael Best & Friedrich law firm," The Post continued. Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. John Kelly continued cashing in on cruelty and joined the board of a company that operated the now-closed prison camp for migrant children in Homestead, Florida. His successor, Kirstjen Nielsen, didn't really stray far and joined a government council.

Kelly and Nielsen in particular tried rehabilitation tours that really just continued exposing them as liars. They probably wished for the luck of Nielsen's former chief of staff Miles Taylor, who got a CNN contributor's gig after managing to convince enough people that he was shocked, shocked!about shenanigans he saw at DHS even though he was there for two years, from 2017 and 2019. Taylor didn't speak out then as a moral whistleblower to expose hateful policies, but instead until this past summer when it was convenient for him. Nor has Taylor fully apologized for many of the policies he helped carry out.

"The longtime GOP strategist who runs a public affairs firm recalled coming close to hiring a former Trump White House staffer until a Google search revealed the prospective hire's track record defending Trump on race and immigration," The Post continued. "It ground the interview process to a halt, the strategist said." But, at the same time, "Americans have short memories," a former Bush and Clinton staffer continued to The Post.

The fact is that from White House aide Stephen Miller to unlawfully appointed acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf, these officials deserve to become pariahs when the administration is at last finished. They brought it on themselves because they knew what they were signing up for from the start: a vulgarian who bragged about committing sexual assault and a racist who vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants even as he exploited many at his own businesses. Don't feel sorry for these officials. Feel sorry for the many people they hurt.

no lnx twt

Trump vaccine that actually works

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly September 9, 2020

If you talked politics over the last few days with Trump supporters, you probably got a good lesson in how they have become inoculated against information that contradicts their assumptions about the president.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic about how Trump referred to Americans who have died in war as “losers” and “suckers” was published last Thursday—just in time to ruminate over the three-day weekend. It included three to four sources per quote and was eventually confirmed by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and the New York Times. As David Frum documented, the reports seemed plausible based on all of the other times Trump attacked members of the military. The silences are also resounding.

Amid the clamor, it’s easy to overlook those who are not yelling, those who are keeping silent. Where are the senior officers of the United States armed forces, serving and retired—the men and women who worked most closely on military affairs with President Trump? Has any one of them stepped forward to say, “That’s not the man I know”?

How many wounded warriors have stepped forward to attest to Trump’s care and concern for them? How many Gold Star families have stepped forward on Trump’s behalf? How many service families?

The silence is resounding. And when such voices do speak, they typically describe a president utterly lacking in empathy to grieving families, wholly uncomprehending of sacrifice and suffering.

It wasn’t long before Trump responded with attacks against Goldberg, The Atlantic, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the magazine’s majority owner.

Most of the president’s supporters didn’t need the prompt, however. It quickly became labelled “fake news.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been preparing to launch a book tour this week, defended Trump by describing a president most of us have never seen.

While Sanders says that she has witnessed Trump showing heart and demonstrating respect, we’ve never actually witnessed that kind of behavior from him in public. It makes her denial much less plausible. But her description of the president is something his supporters desperately want to believe. So they utilize the closure mechanisms Trump has provided for them by calling The Atlantic report “fake news,” which automatically makes the president a victim. It is exactly the process described by Julian Sanchez in his explanation of the term “epistemic closure.”

Over the weekend a chorus arose asking for John Kelly, who was present during most of the discussions cited by Goldberg, to address what happened. Underlying that call is the assumption that the former White House Chief of Staff could actually clear things up. While I think that he should do so for the sake of his own conscience, it is absurd to think that Trump supporters would listen to him any more than they did when former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the president a threat to our Constitution.

The president’s supporters are not going to change their minds about the most dishonest and corrupt man to ever occupy the Oval Office. While it remains important to document his incompetence and malfeasance, it isn’t likely to have any impact politically. Trump has one vaccine that actually works: He’s inoculated his supporters against anything that might threaten their loyalty to him.

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1/20 backs bolton book impeach

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/warren-calls-for-immediate-resignation-of-trumps-former-fda-chief-after-he-quietly-joins-pfizer-board/

**Warren calls for immediate resignation of Trump’s former FDA chief after he quietly joins Pfizer board**Ma:{ybe **Scott Gottlieb** thought he could avoid scrutiny by making the move to the board of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer just over two months after leaving his position as President Donald Trump’s commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—but if so, he didn’t count on Sen. Elizabeth Warren.:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who is also running for her party’s nomination for president in 2020, released a letter (pdf) Tuesday morning calling on Gottlieb to step down from the board in the name of government ethics.

"You will be on the board of a company that has billions of dollars at stake in the decisions made by the agency you used to head and the employees you used to lead,” states Warren’s letter.

It’s a profitable venture for Gottlieb.

“According to Pfizer,” Warren notes, “board members in 2018 were paid $142,500 in cash retainers, plus received $192,500 worth of Pfizer stock.”

00:0200:33

Appointed by Trump, Gottlieb was the head of the FDA from 2017 until he resigned on April 5 of this year. After leaving the government, he took a job with right-wing think tank The American Enterprise Institute. The move to Pfizer, however, came later and was only announced on June 27.

In Warren’s letter, which Common Dreams obtained exclusively and is reproduced below, the senator refers favorably to Gottlieb’s work with the FDA before hitting him on joining Pfizer and tying that move to the behavior of other officials in President Donald Trump’s White House who have left the administration for big money payouts.

“You are the second high-level Trump Administration official in less than two months to join the board of a corporation soon after leaving government service,” reads the letter. “In May 2019, formerTrump Administration DHS Secretary and Chief of Staff John Kelly joined the board of Caliburn, Inc., the parent company of the Comprehensive Health Services, which runs the notorious Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Florida.”

“You should rectify your mistake and immediately resign from your position as a Pfizer board member,” Warren adds.

Warren’s letter cites her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act as a possible solution to government officials behaving in this way in the future. As Common Dreamsreported in June, Warren and the legislation’s sponsor in the House, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), see the problem as systemic to Washington’s public-private revolving door. Rep. John Sabarnes (D-Md.) is co-sponsoring Jayapal’s version of the law.

Gottlieb’s move to Pfizer was also noticed by Public Citizen Health Research Group co-founder Sidney Wolfe.

“This is classic and it’s not surprising,” Wolfe told health news site Stat. “Philosophically, he’s returning to the ecosystem where he’s most comfortable. And he’ll get paid very well for it, too.”

Read Warren’s letter:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s… by on Scribd

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omfg

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

some lnx below

Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science

May 27, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

[Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.]

Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.

As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey,James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.

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President Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of holding public debates on the validity of climate science.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times]

Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.

Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.

“What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics,” said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”

In an email, James Hewitt, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, defended the proposed changes.

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“The previous use of inaccurate modeling that focuses on worst-case emissions scenarios, that does not reflect real-world conditions, needs to be thoroughly re-examined and tested if such information is going to serve as the scientific foundation of nationwide decision-making now and in the future,” Mr. Hewitt said.

However, the goal of political appointees in the Trump administration is not just to change the climate assessment’s methodology, which has broad scientific consensus, but also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.

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The Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, a region that is warming rapidly. The United States recently declined to sign a communiqué on protecting the Arctic unless it omitted references to climate change.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times]

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“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

Mr. Happer’s proposed panel is backed by John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, who brought Mr. Happer into the N.S.C. after an earlier effort to recruit him during the transition.

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Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer,the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.

Climate scientists are dismissive of Mr. Happer; his former colleagues at Princeton are chagrined. And several White House officials — including Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser — have urged Mr. Trump not to adopt Mr. Happer’s proposal, on the grounds that it would be perceived as a White House attack on science.

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Even Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who views Mr. Happer as “the climate hustler’s worst nightmare — a world-class physicist from the nation’s leading institution of advanced learning, who does not suffer fools gladly,” is apprehensive about what Mr. Happer is trying to do.

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“The very idea will start a holy war on cable before 2020,” he said. “Better to win now and introduce the study in the second inaugural address.”

But at a White House meeting on May 1, at which the skeptical advisers made their case, Mr. Trump appeared unpersuaded, people familiar with the meeting said. Mr. Happer, they said, is optimistic that the panel will go forward.

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William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council, is pushing to create a climate review panel that would question scientific consensus.CreditPool photo by Albin Lohr-Jones]

The concept is not new. Mr. Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of a series of military-style exercises, known as “red team, blue team” debates, on the validity of climate science first promoted by Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator who was forced to resign last year amid multiple scandals.

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At the time, the idea was shot down by John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff. But since Mr. Kelly’s departure, Mr. Trump has talked about using Mr. Happer’s proposed panel as a forum for it.

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For Mr. Trump, climate change is often the subject of mockery. “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!” he posted on Twitter in January when a snowstorm was freezing much of the country.

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His views are influenced mainly by friends and donors like Carl Icahn, the New York investor who owns oil refineries, and the oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm — both of whom pushed Mr. Trump to deregulate the energy industry.

ImageThe Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: The White House Plan to Change Climate Science]

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https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-john-kelly-exit-interview-20181230-story.html

In  August 2017, shortly after John F. Kelly became White House chief of staff, he convened crucial meetings on Afghanistan at President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

Top officials from the Pentagon and the CIA, the director of national intelligence, diplomats and lawmakers huddled with Trump as Kelly and others urged him not to give up in Afghanistan.

“When I first took over, he was inclined to want to withdraw from Afghanistan,” Kelly recounted during an exclusive two-hour interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“He was frustrated. It was a huge decision to make ... and frankly there was no system at all for a lot of reasons — palace intrigue and the rest of it — when I got there.”

The retired four-star Marine general will leave the administration on Wednesday. First as Homeland Security chief and then in 18 months at the White House, he presided over some of the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration and security policies.

In the phone interview Friday, Kelly defended his rocky tenure, arguing that it is best measured by what the president did not do when Kelly was at his side.

It was only after Kelly’s departure was confirmed Dec. 8, for example, that Trump abruptly announced the pullout of all U.S. troops from Syria and half the 14,000 troops from Afghanistan, two moves that Kelly had opposed.

Kelly’s supporters say he stepped in to block or divert the president on dozens of matters large and small. They credit him, in part, for persuading Trump not to pull U.S. forces out of South Korea, or withdraw from NATO, as he had threatened.

Kelly said he made sure that Trump had access to multiple streams of detailed information before he made a decision — even if the president says he often relies on his gut, rather than U.S. intelligence.

“It’s never been: The president just wants to make a decision based on no knowledge and ignorance,” Kelly said. “You may not like his decision, but at least he was fully informed on the impact.”

Kelly allowed that spending nearly every waking minute of 15-hour days with a president seemingly inundated with one crisis after another has been a “bone-crushing hard job, but you do it.”

On most days, he said, he woke up at 4 a.m. and typically came home at 9 p.m. Then he often went straight into a secure area for classified reports and communications so he could keep working.

“I’m guarded by the Secret Service. I can’t even go get a beer,” he quipped.

Trump sometimes pressed his advisors on the limits of his authority under the law, often asking Kelly, “‘Why can’t we do it this way?’”

But Trump never ordered him to do anything illegal, Kelly stressed, “because we wouldn’t have.”

“If he had said to me, ‘Do it, or you’re fired,’” Kelly said he would have resigned.

Trump enlisted him to bring order to a White House racked by inter-agency rivalry, high staff turnover and constant controversy, Kelly said. Although he sometimes clashed with other aides, he said, he tried to leave politics out of it.

“I told the president the last thing in my view that you need in the chief of staff is someone that looks at every issue through a political lens,” Kelly said.

Kelly served 46 years in the Marines, from the Vietnam War to the rise of Islamic State, making him the U.S. military’s longest-serving general when he retired in January 2016.

When Trump picked him to head Homeland Security, and then serve as White House chief of staff, officials from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill expressed hope that Kelly would be one of the “adults in the room” to manage a mercurial president.

To critics, Kelly failed at that task, unable to rein in Trump’s angry tweets or bring order to executive decision-making.

Worse, they argue, he aggressively advocated and implemented harsh immigration measures, including separating migrant children from their parents on the border last summer, that quickly ran aground or were reversed in the courts.

Kelly rejects reports that Trump bristled at the endless briefings and Kelly’s tight-fisted control of access to the Oval Office.

But his anticlimactic exit reflects a tenure dogged from the outset by the indignities of constant speculation, fueled by the president’s own public remarks, that he would be fired.

Kelly said he decided it was time to leave after the Nov. 6 midterm election, which saw heavy Republican losses in Congress and statehouses. The president announced Kelly’s decision Dec. 8.

"John Kelly will be leaving, I don’t know if I can say retiring,” Trump said from the South Lawn as he left for the annual Army-Navy football game. “But he’s a great guy.”

Unlike Kelly’s friend James N. Mattis, the retired Marine general who resigned as secretary of Defense with a public letter rebuking the president for abandoning allies and undermining alliances, Kelly kept his counsel.

But his impending departure from the eye of the storm created an embarrassing void at the White House as one candidate after another publicly pulled out or declined the chief of staff job.

On Dec. 14, Trump named Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, as acting chief of staff.

Even administration critics see Kelly’s departure as worrisome, saying he brought hard-edged national security experience and the integrity and ability to stand up to the president.

“It’s a loss, there’s no question,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif).

“Now, it just seems to be a free-for-all,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I). “There’s no real consistent figure that’s going to stand there and just make sure literally the trains run on time. I think that was one of Kelly’s major contributions.”

Kelly leaves as Trump has been cocooned in the White House as a partial government shutdown moves into a second week over his demands for $5 billion for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president has responded by firing off angry tweets at Democrats, who refuse to provide more than $1.3 billion for border security, rather than seeking to negotiate a solution.

The stalemate also highlights the distance, at least in language, between Kelly and Trump over the president’s signature promise — to build a wall.

“To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Kelly said.

When Kelly led Homeland Security in early 2017, one of his first steps was to seek advice from those who “actually secure the border,” Customs and Border Protection agents whom Kelly calls “salt-of-the-earth, Joe-Six-Pack folks.”

“They said, ‘Well we need a physical barrier in certain places, we need technology across the board, and we need more people,’ ” he said.

“The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats. But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”

Asked if there is a security crisis at the southern border, or whether Trump has drummed up fears of a migrant “invasion” for political reasons, Kelly did not answer directly, but said, “We do have an immigration problem.”

From the 1980s to the mid-2000s, apprehensions at the border — the most common measure of illegal immigration — routinely reached more than1 million migrants a year.

Today, they are near historical lows. In the fiscal year that ended in September, border authorities apprehended 521,090 people.

But immigration officials are seeing a dramatic rise in families and unaccompanied minors at the border, mostly from Central America.

Kelly saw the corruption and violence that spurred migrations from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, first as head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, which stretches from South America to Mexico’s southern border, then at Homeland Security.

He says that experience has given him a nuanced view on immigration and border security — one that at times appears at odds with Trump’s harsh anti-immigration messaging and policy.

“Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people,” Kelly said, describing many migrants as victims misled by traffickers. “I have nothing but compassion for them, the young kids.”

But he blamed immigrants and lawmakers, not the White House, for the tense situation at the border, where thousands of Central Americans are stranded in Mexico — and two Guatemalan children have died in Border Patrol custody in Texas and New Mexico this month.

“One of the reasons why it’s so difficult to keep people from coming — obviously it’d be preferable for them to stay in their own homeland but it’s difficult to do sometimes, where they live — is a crazy, oftentimes conflicting series of loopholes in the law in the United States that makes it extremely hard to turn people around and send them home,” Kelly said.

“If we don’t fix the laws, then they will keep coming,” he continued. “They have known, and they do know, that if they can get here, they can, generally speaking, stay.”

On Saturday, Trump blamed Democrats for the deaths of the two migrant children this month. He also threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Central America if another reported migrant caravan isn’t stopped.

Kelly didn’t respond to Trump’s threats directly but suggested part of the problem lies on the U.S. side of the border.

“If you want to stop illegal immigration, stop U.S. demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity” in Central America, he said.

Kelly faulted the administration for failing to follow procedure and failing to anticipate the public outrage for the two most controversial initiatives of his tenure: Trump’s travel ban in January 2017, and the “zero tolerance” immigration policy and family separations this year.

Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order immediately suspending the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days, indefinitely freezing the entry of refugees from Syria and barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Refugees already approved for resettlement, green card holders and others were turned awayfrom flights, detained, and in some cases deported. Federal judges issued emergency stays, and several iterations of the travel ban have been challenged in court.

At the time, despite reports he’d been caught off-guard by the president’s order, Kelly gave a full-throated defense.

“I had very little opportunity to look at them” before the orders were announced, Kelly acknowledged in The Times interview. “Obviously, it brought down a greater deal of thunder on the president.”

Blain Rethmeier, who helped shepherd Kelly and his replacement at Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, through their Senate confirmations, put it more colorfully: “He got handed a [crap] sandwich the first week on the job.”

“There’s only so many things a chief of staff can do, particularly with a personality like Donald Trump,” said David Lapan of the Bipartisan Policy Center, who worked with Kelly at Defense and Homeland Security.

In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy for immigration violations. U.S. officials already had begun to put the policy into practice, resulting in hundreds of migrant children being separated from their parents.

Kelly said Sessions’ announcement caught the White House by surprise.

“What happened was Jeff Sessions, he was the one that instituted the zero-tolerance process on the border that resulted in both people being detained and the family separation,” Kelly said. “He surprised us.”

The chaotic implementation then fell primarily on the Department of Health and Human Services and Nielsen, who came under fire for standing on the White House podium and saying there was no policy of separating families.

“She is a good soldier; she took the face shot,” a senior White House official said on background. “No one asked her to do it, but by the time we could put together a better strategy, she’d already owned it.”

Kelly surprised some of his friends when he backed Trump after a deadly clash between neo-Nazis and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.

When Trump blamed “both sides” for the violence, Kelly seemed to hang his head in disapproval. But later he defended Confederate memorials and suggested the Civil War was not caused by slavery but inability to compromise.

In early 2018, Kelly conceded he’d mishandled the removal of Rob Porter, then-White House staff secretary, after reports emerged that two ex-wives had accused Porter of abuse.

But an episode in October 2017 may have been most telling for Kelly’s struggles as a public face of the administration.

After a deadly ambush against U.S. troops in Niger, Kelly gave a rare White House news briefing to defend the president. He attacked a Florida congresswoman who was friends with the family of one of the soldiers who’d been killed, and despite video evidence contradicting his claims, did not apologize.

Kelly’s eldest son, Robert, also a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. He said that before his son’s death, as a Marine commander, he would go to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center or to too many funerals and try to imagine what the parents were going through.

“I couldn’t have imagined that loss,” he said. “There is no burden a family bears that is heavier than to have lost a child, and with that child serving.”

Asked why he stayed 18 months in the White House, despite policy differences, personality clashes, the punishing schedule, and a likely lasting association with some of Trump’s controversies, he said simply: duty.

“Military people,” he said, “don’t walk away.”

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John Kelly to Step Down as Trump, Facing New Perils, Shakes Up ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/us/politics/john-kelly-chief-staff-trump.html

Dec 8, 2018 - WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Saturday that his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, would step down by the end of the year, the latest ...

John F. Kelly says his tenure as Trump's chief of staff is best measured ...

https://www.latimes.com/.../la-na-pol-john-kelly-exit-interview-20181230-story.html

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:{:{Dec 30, 2018 - :(style="color:#777777;"):}:In August 2017, shortly after :{John:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: F. :{Kelly:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: became White House :{chief:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: of :{staff:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}:, he convened crucial meetings on Afghanistan at President :{Trump’s:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: golf club in Bedminster, N.J. ... “When I first took over, he was inclined to want to withdraw from Afghanistan,” :{Kelly:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: recounted during ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

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djt spends 2 mill$ on mil, takes them away from family, then pulls before caravan arrives? nope 2x down:

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-john-kelly-use-force-cabinet-order

no lnx pix

'Stunt or an attempt to please POTUS': Bizarre report suggests White House is expanding military's 'use of force' at the U.S.-Mexico border

Everything about this order is strange and ominous.

By Matthew Chapman / AlterNet November 21, 2018, 3:24 PM GMT

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U.S. Department of Homeland Security

On Wednesday, the Military Times reported that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had signed a "cabinet order" directing Defense Secretary James Mattis to give the troops stationed at the border in anticipation of the approaching Honduran migrant caravan the authority to use deadly force to protect Border Patrol agents, and to engage in some law enforcement activities like crowd control, detention, and searches.

The order represents yet another show of force by the administration, which has tried to gin up public fear about the caravan as an "invasion" and possibly a cover for terrorists, even though it is not a national security threat. But this new move is bizarre and unsettling on a number of levels.

First, the law enforcement provisions of the order raise questions about the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the military from serving domestic law enforcement functions. Until now, the military has only been serving in a support role, including surveillance and transportation. Mattis gave assurances that the order complies with Posse Comitatus. Retired Army lawyer and Lt. Col. Geoffrey Corn, however, is unconvinced, calling the order "troubling" and noting that "absent the invocation of a law called the Insurrection Act, the president is not supposed to deploy federal active-duty military forces" for law enforcement:

Embedded video

PBS NewsHour

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@NewsHour

President Trump has issued a new directive to the troops stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border that allows them to use "lethal force" to defend border patrol agents. Federal law, however, restricts domestic military force. @NickSchifrin examines the legality of this directive.

Second, although this order does follow a "memorandum of understanding" signed by the president, some are questioning why Kelly, a White House official with no role in the military chain of command, was the one who signed the order to the Secretary of Defense:

...

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/melania-trump-urging-president-oust-national-security-official-after-clashing

Trump's long-expected post-midterms White House shakeup is underway, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions being the first to get the boot. But a much larger White House exodus is being planned, reportedly including Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and Chief of Staff John Kelly.

But there are others expected to get pink slips.

A Trump administration top national security official is reportedly also on the firing list, for reasons that appear to have nothing to do with national security.

"The president has also decided to remove Mira Ricardel, the top deputy for national security adviser John Bolton, officials said," The Wall Street Journal reports.

"The president became involved in that decision at the urging of first lady Melania Trump, whose staff battled with Ms. Ricardel during the first lady’s trip to Africa last month over seating on the plane and requests to use National Security Council resources, according to people familiar with the matter." the Journal notes.

The conflict with Ricardel may be among the reasons Trump wants to give Kelly the boot.

NBC News adds questions about Kelly's "future in the White House recently became more serious after his repeated clashes with national security adviser John Bolton and his deputy, Mira Ricardel."

Kelly has been battling with the First Lady's staff, denying them promotions.

One White House official told NBC News there "have been instances where the East Wing staff were not treated as equals to the male-dominated decision makers in Chief Kelly’s office."

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mma 718

Politico is reporting that White House chief of staff John Kelly’s relationship with President Donald Trump is withering and that as they “have proven increasingly incompatible,” Fox News shows and personalities seem to be filling the void in the White House.

Media Matters has documented the Trump-Fox News feedback loop since the early days of the Trump administration, but as Trump continues to bring on former Fox News employees for White House positions, Fox’s influence over the administration is becoming more stark. Less than one month ago, Trump hired disgraced former Fox News executive Bill Shine as White House communications director (a move Trump sycophant and “unofficial chief of staff” Sean Hannity staunchly endorsed). And now Politico reports that Kelly, who was ostensibly hired to “impose order on a chaotic” White House, has been unable to prevent the president from soliciting advice from a “coterie of outside advisers, including Fox News host Sean Hannity.” Trump is even reportedly setting his daily agenda by simply tuning into his favorite show, Fox & Friends, as a former White House official told Politico that Trump “comes down for the day, and whatever he saw on 'Fox and Friends,' he schedules meetings based on that.”

From Politico’s July 30 article, by Eliana Johnson:

Kelly has done away with “meeting crashers,” the West Wing aides who showed up for meetings uninvited, according to a White House aide, but he has not been able to curb Trump’s practice of adding and subtracting advisers to meetings throughout the day or of turning scheduled gatherings into freewheeling discussions of subjects that suit his interests — including those suggested to him by his coterie of outside advisers, including Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“He comes down for the day, and whatever he saw on 'Fox and Friends,' he schedules meetings based on that,” said one former White House official. “If it’s Iran, it’s ‘Get John Bolton down here!’ … If he’s seen something on TV or [was] talking to Hannity the night before, he’s got lots of flexibility to do whatever he wants to do.”

…

With closer contact, Trump and Kelly have proven increasingly incompatible. The president makes decisions in part based on the blurts emitted from a media world of his own creation, his television tuned to Fox News and his cellphone at the ready to dial up any number of its on-air talent. Kelly, by contrast, rarely watches television and doesn’t follow Twitter, the forum on which the president announces many of his decisions.

The retired Marine general has a reputation for preferring “soft power” over military strength. He rejects criticism of Guantanamo Bay, which he was responsible for as head of U.S. Southern Command. In that position, he also helped police the southern border — experience Trump will rely on to implement his immigration policies, Politico reports. Kelly has voiced concern over opening up combat positions to women. He is widely respected for continuing to serve even after his son died in Afghanistan.

homeland security adviser Tom Bossert is leaving the Trump administration, another departure during what has been a chaotic few months of personnel changes.

Bossert, a favorite of Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, is leaving one day after national security adviser John Bolton began the job. Bossert was believed to be on shaky footing in the Bolton era, and he resigned two days after Michael Anton, the National Security Council spokesman, also quit.

Bossert’s resignation was requested by Bolton, according to three people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel ­issues. Bolton himself conveyed that request to Bossert on Tuesday morning when Bossert walked into the office, the people said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment on whether Bossert was pushed out.

“I’m not going to get into specific details about the ongoings of personnel. But I can tell you that he resigned,” she told reporters Tuesday. “The president feels he’s done a great job and wishes him the best as he moves forward.”

Bossert joins a growing list of officials who have left the administration in recent months as the historically high staff turnover rate continues under Trump.

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https://www.axios.com/john-kellys-day-from-hell-1521292250-57d3a9a3-e67b-424a-8999-907f21fa2155.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-sued-correspondence-heartland-institute-2548433710.html

EPA Sued Over Failure to Release Correspondence With Heartland Institute

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being sued for its "unlawful and unreasonable delay" in responding to requests for information about the agency's communications with the Heartland Institute, according to a complaint by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The Heartland Institute is an Illinois-based think tank that rejects the science of man-made climate change and has received funding from the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry.

The lawsuit centers around the EDF and SELC's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for communications between the EPA and the Heartland Institute in August and October of 2017, respectively.

The requests were made after Heartland Institute Communications Director Jim Lakely said last July, "The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland Institute to help identify scientists who could constitute a red team, and we've been happy to oblige."

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, has long insisted on a nationally publicized "red team-blue team" debate that would pit climate skeptics against scientists who accept the facts about global warming. However, news emerged this week that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has reportedly put a stop to Pruitt's plan.

According to the complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the EPA acknowledged both requests and asked for some initial clarification, but has subsequently stopped communicating with SELC and provided vague responses to EDF's outreach that do not indicate any expectation of near-term progress on EDF's FOIA request.

There certainly appears to be some—and even extensive—contact between the EPA and the Heartland Institute. As seen below, the complaint states that the EPA's own search for correspondence between agency employees and Heartland yielded between 200 and 600 records.

John F. Kelly - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kelly

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:{Jump to :(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:White House **Chief of Staff** - John Francis Kelly (born May 11, 1950) is an American government bureaucrat and retired general, who is the current White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump. He had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the same administration.

Reince Priebus · ‎United States Southern ... · ‎Kurt W. Tidd · ‎Joe Hagin

John Kelly, White House chief of staff, may also be on the way out in ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-white-house-staff-shakeup-john-kelly/

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

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:{2 days ago - A shake-up that some at the White House are preemptively calling a purge is coming. It could take down a :{chief of staff:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, a national security adviser, and up to three Cabinet secretaries, reports CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett. It all depends on President Trump's volatile mood and ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

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