John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.

In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

Kelly concluded, “God help us.”

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    1 year ago

    He’s almost 80…

    It’s one thing to cut a 20 year old slack for how they were raised, but at some point it’s fine to judge them for never working on themselves.

    • macrocephalic@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      He was surrounded by sycophants such that he never had to work on himself. There was always someone to blame, and someone to fix up the trail of carnage.

    • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      How you’re raised affects you’re entire life, this would be especially true for someone who’s never needed to even wipe their own ass. It’s okay to dislike someone and how they are, have compassion for the misfortune (all the money in the world doesn’t make up for missed parental love and attention) that produced such a shitty human being and not have it be a defense of his actions.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
      22·
      1 year ago

      That’s a fair point.

      Unfortunately most people like Trump don’t work on themselves unless they’re held accountable.

      He made it to nearly 80 before his actions and behavior caught up to him. We’re as much to blame as a society for not only feeding his ego, but electing him president after we all knew he was a rapist.

      So, I still have compassion for the love starved child inside of him. And hope that he’s held accountable, to send all people like him a strong message so that maybe people who looked to him as a role model, will wise up and work on themselves a bit instead of following the Cheeto’s path.