Donald Trump added to his unfortunate record of disparaging military service two weeks ago when the former president said the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the Medal of Honor — comments the Veterans of Foreign Wars, among others, described as “asinine.”
Former Trump chief of staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, a fierce critic of his former boss, agreed. “The two awards cannot be compared in any way,” he told CNN. “Not even close.”
A week later, the GOP presidential nominee returned fire. The New York Times reported:
In a podcast interview that ran on Monday, Donald Trump again attacked current military leadership as “woke,” and mocked his former chief of staff and the man he appointed as his top military adviser as “stupid.” “Milley was a stupid person, very stupid,” Trump said of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he picked to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He added of his onetime chief of staff, “Guys like John Kelly are one of the — he’s one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. A bully, but a weak bully.”
In case it weren’t quite enough that Trump referred to his own former White House chief of staff as “one of the dumbest people” he’s ever met, in the same interview, the Republican called Kelly a “lowlife” and a “terrible, stupid person.”
Trump says his former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly is a “terrible, stupid person” because he told the media that Trump called our veterans who died in war “suckers” and “losers.” pic.twitter.com/MhKgIsa0hA
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) August 26, 2024
With 10 weeks remaining before Election Day, Trump is directing some of his harshest criticisms at the retired Marine general he tapped to oversee the Department of Homeland Security and his own White House.
Indeed, this latest offensive extends one of the strangest ongoing feuds in contemporary American politics. Circling back to our earlier coverage, it was just two months ago when Trump, unprompted, lashed out at Kelly as “dumb” and a “lost soul.” Months earlier, by way of his social media platform, the former president said his former chief of staff was “by far the dumbest of my Military people.” He added, in reference to Kelly, “He was incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog.’ He had no heart or respect for people, so I hit him hard.”
In a follow-up missive, Trump went on to say that Kelly is “a Lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth.”
There was no great mystery as to the motivation for the offensive. After all, Kelly is the one who confirmed on the record that Trump really did denigrate American servicemembers as “suckers and losers.”
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly told CNN in October 2023. Referring to his former boss, Kelly added, “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.”
Kelly has also accused Trump of “poisoning” people’s minds, having “serious character issues” and not being “a real man.”
What’s more, Kelly told The New York Times in 2022 that Trump, during his presidency, told his chief of staff to use the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department to target his critics and perceived political foes.
The Times’ report went on to note, “Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted.” The then-president “regularly” made the demands anyway.
I continue to believe the fact that the Republican nominee is publicly feuding with his own former DHS secretary and chief of staff should probably be a bigger deal in the 2024 campaign.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
