What the general said
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who knows the pain of losing a loved one in war, issued a dignified and emotional plea for politicians to stop using the lives of the fallen as political props. All should heed his clarion call, especially President Trump, the man to whom Kelly reports.
A retired four-star Marine general, Kelly led men into combat. He lost one son in Afghanistan in 2010. He has another son currently serving there.
Days into a bitter debate over the commanderin-chief’s handling of the deaths of four Green Berets who died two weeks ago in an ambush in Niger, Kelly now takes deep umbrage at the congresswoman who took public the grief of Myeshia Johnson, the widow of one of the fallen.
Kelly said the public lashing by Rep. Frederica Wilson — who relayed that at the end of Trump’s call, Johnson broke down in tears, upset that the President didn’t even know her husband’s name — left him “stunned” and “broken-hearted.”
The reaction from a man as rightfully protective of the military as Kelly is due respect; no one should exploit the suffering of a war widow.
But it bears noting that Johnson’s mother, and his widow, have taken no issue with Wilson’s description of the call. While Kelly suggested Wilson breached protocol by “listening in” to a private conversation, the fact is, the congresswoman is a long-time friend of the family. She was riding with them when the call came, and they chose to put the President on speakerphone.
More to the point, it is Trump himself who made the fateful choice to play cheap politics with his handling of casualties of war.
He’s the one claimed to have called “every family of someone who’s died” — a self-serving lie.
He’s the one who disgustingly tore down his predecessors, again falsely, for supposedly failing to call the families of those killed in action.
He’s the one who, when criticized, dragged Kelly and Kelly’s son into the conversation — urging the media to ask the general whether President Obama had called him. Kelly says he never meant to criticize Obama’s handling of the matter.
It is Trump and Trump alone who, consumed by his ego, took the fateful first step of turning the war dead into pawns. He has done it before. And, unless he truly takes his chief of staff’s words to heart, he will do it again.