John Kelly emotional in defense of Trump
He says lawmaker is wrong to disclose phone call to widow
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly delivers an emotional, personal defense of President Donald Trump’s call this week to the widow of a slain soldier, describing the trauma of learning about his own son’s death and calling criticism of Trump’s call unfair.
WASHINGTON — John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, delivered an emotional, personal defense of President Donald Trump’s call this week to the widow of a slain soldier, describing the trauma of learning about his own son’s death in Afghanistan and calling the criticism of Trump’s call unfair.
Kelly said that he was stunned to see the criticism, which came from a Democratic congresswoman, Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida, after Trump delivered a similar message to the widow of one of the soldiers killed in Niger. Kelly said afterward he had to collect his thoughts by going to Arlington National Cemetery.
In a remarkable, somber appearance in the White House briefing room, Kelly, a retired Marine general whose son 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly was slain in battle in 2010, said he had told the president what he was told when he got the news.
“He was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed,” Kelly recalled. “He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were, because we were at war.
“I was stunned when I came to work yesterday, and brokenhearted, when I saw what a member of Congress was doing,” he said. “What she was saying, what she was doing on TV. The only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go walk among the finest men or women on this Earth.”
Kelly, who had long guarded his personal story of loss even as he served as a high-profile public official, broke that silence in dramatic fashion on Thursday. With no advance notice to reporters, Kelly offered poignant criticism of the news media and the broader society for failing to properly respect the fallen.
The appearance came after Trump and the White House were consumed by criticism after the president’s actions this week — first appearing to criticize former presidents for failing to call the families of fallen service members and later for the words Trump chose to use in speaking with the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson.
Kelly expressed frustration and even anger at the fact that the conversation between Trump and Johnson’s widow was exposed to the world by Wilson, a friend of the family, who was in the car with the family when the president’s call came in.
“I thought at least that was sacred,” Kelly said.
Wilson had publicized her criticism of Trump’s call, saying that the president had told Johnson’s widow that he “knew what he signed up for,” and that the family was offended by Trump’s words.
Kelly said that Trump had tried, in the call, to express what Kelly had talked to him about ahead of time — that people like her husband were doing what they loved, and what they had chosen to do, when they were killed serving the country.
“That’s what the president tried to say to four families,” Kelly said.
Wilson said late Thursday that she stood by her comments on Trump’s remarks.