Donald Trump refused to visit a First World War cemetery in France because it was filled with “suckers” and “losers”, according to John Kelly, his longest-serving chief of staff. Trump, while president, also did not want to appear alongside disabled veterans at a military parade because “it doesn’t look good for me”. Kelly, 73, a former Marine Corps general who served as Trump’s top White House official from 2017 to 2019, has gone on the record to confirm various stories of him disparaging military heroes that he dismissed as “fake news”.
Kelly confirmed that Trump called John McCain, the late Republican senator who was a prisoner of war for five and a half years in North Vietnam, and George Bush Sr, who as a navy pilot was shot down in the Second World War, “losers”.
“[Trump is] 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’,” Kelly said in a statement to CNN.
He was reacting to Trump’s comment that Mark Milley, who retired last week from his post as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, deserved to be executed for treason for maintaining close ties with his Chinese counterpart.
Kelly denounced the former president as “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. 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.”
His disgust at Trump’s comments were fuelled by personal tragedy: his son Robert, a Marine, was killed aged 29 in 2010 when he stepped on a landmine in Sangin, Afghanistan.
A turncoat, maybe … but his opinions are validated by his experiences …