To Our American Generals

What retired Marine general and former WH Chief of Staff John Kelly has said about Donald J. Trump:

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

[Trump] “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”

“I think he’d love to be just like he was in business — he could tell people to do things and they would do it, and not really bother too much about whether what the legalities were and whatnot.”

“And I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”

“He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.”

“He just doesn’t understand the values — he pretends, he talks, he knows more about America than anybody, but he doesn’t.”

“Certainly, a big surprise for him, again, was if you remember at the beginning of the administration, he would talk about ‘his generals’ … I don’t know why he thought that — but then a very big surprise for him was that we were — those of us who were former generals and certainly people still on active duty — that the commitment, the loyalty was to the Constitution, without question, without second thought.”

“That was a big surprise to him that the generals were not loyal to the boss, in this case him.”

“[Trump] commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.’”

“Certainly his not wanting to be seen with amputees — amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country fighting for every American, him included, to protect them, but didn’t want to be seen with them. That’s an interesting perspective for the commander in chief to have” … “He would just say: ‘Look, it just doesn’t look good for me.’”

“Whenever John McCain’s name came up, he’d go through this rant about him being a loser, and all those people were suckers, and why do you people think that people getting killed are heroes? And he’d go through this rant.”

“And I thought he was asking one of these rhetorical kind of, you know, questions” … “But I didn’t realize he was serious — he just didn’t see what the point was. As I got to know him, again, this selflessness is something he just didn’t understand. What’s in it for them?”

“Trump used the terms suckers and losers to describe soldiers who gave their lives in the defense of our country.”