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   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   John Kelly Goes On The Record To Confirm Several Disturbing Stories About   
   Traitor Defendant Trump   
      
      
   CNN  —   
      
   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.   
      
   Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number   
   of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors   
   attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of   
   objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.   
      
   “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if   
   he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made   
   by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend   
   their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat,   
   or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is   
   nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the   
   presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A   
   person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all   
   Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our   
   most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are   
   ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.   
      
   “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of   
   unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews,   
   on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea   
   what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A   
   person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his   
   country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason   
   – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires   
   autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt   
   for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.   
      
   “There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”   
      
   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?”   
      
   Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the   
   American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in   
   combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015   
   that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not   
   a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who   
   weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this   
   lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a   
   “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also   
   shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”   
      
   CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials   
   there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record,   
   a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly,   
   and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the   
   character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman   
   General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.   
      
   The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the   
   centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to   
   several senior staff members, 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.   
      
   And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider:   
   Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in   
   which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants   
   no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in   
   his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of   
   the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells   
   Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”   
      
   “Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one   
   group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried   
   over in Arlington.”   
      
   “I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”   
      
   The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic,   
   a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark   
   Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army   
   Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the   
   new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see   
   that, the wounded.”   
      
   Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that   
   same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump   
   presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military   
   feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call   
   authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese   
   counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.   
      
   That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward   
   and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site   
   that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the   
   punishment would have been DEATH.”   
      
   Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley   
   told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on   
   those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier,   
   me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”   
      
   Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide   
   Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new   
   book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave   
   threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in   
   American history.”   
      
   “Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-   
   White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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