THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR GENERAL

As we reach the end of National Character Counts Week, let us pause to remember how Newt Gingrich kicked off the weeklong festivities.  On Monday, possibly with a glass or two of 100 proof Covfefe under his belt, he tweeted that “Presideent Trtump was rermarkably stgroing….” 

After that auspicious start, what could go wrong?   

Then came a teensy little controversy over whether or not any president, ever, personally called or contacted the families of servicemen killed in action.  When it was clear that the answer was, “All of them but you,” Trump stopped tweeting long enough to phone the wife of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger.  When the call came through, the grieving widow was with her mother-in-law and a family friend, so she switched on the speakerphone to let them hear what Trump had to say. 

It was here that an apparent miscalculation by senior White House staff blew up in Trump’s face.  They should know by now that Donald Trump is completely devoid of empathy, and can’t be bothered to fake it.  His staff should have given him a script and begged him to stick to it.  Instead, Chief of Staff John Kelly just gave him some talking points. 

Kelly probably expected Trump to say something like, “your brave husband knew the risks, but he willingly took those risks for the sake of his country.”  Somehow, that came out as an overly blunt “he knew what he signed up for.”  The grieving widow was upset, as were her mother-in-law and the family friend – who turned out to be Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson.

That pretty well ensured that the press would hear about the incident, at which point Trump did what he always does.  He lied.  He denied what three witnesses heard him say. 

Then things got complicated.  Faux journalist Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump (the blonde one), claimed that she’d read a transcript of the conversation, and that while Rep. Wilson’s account may have been technically correct, she had misjudged the president’s intent. 

If they’d stuck with that story, the whole thing might have blown over.  But Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied that any such transcript existed. 

Then things got even more complicated.  For some reason, John Kelly decided to make this his problem.  Instead of just playing the incident off as an unfortunate misunderstanding, Kelly chose to insult Rep. Wilson and accuse her of lying at a speech she made at the dedication of an FBI field office in her south Florida congressional district in 2015.  He claimed that she took credit for getting the building funded. 

Kelly’s story immediately began to unravel.  Wilson wasn’t in Congress when the building was funded, and never claimed to have had a role in funding it.  What she said (and no one has contradicted this) was that she’d helped convince the government to name the facility after two FBI agents who’d been killed in the line of duty.  She made a point of thanking other politicians, including some Republicans, for their work on the project.  Her version of the events has been confirmed by a video of the complete dedication ceremony.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Kelly deliberately lied.  If you were willing to bend over backwards to give Kelly the benefit of the doubt, you’d still have to ding him for a seriously faulty memory, and then explain why he insulted Rep. Wilson. The decent thing to do would have been to apologize. 

Of course, we’re talking about the Trump White House, where no one ever does the decent thing.  Instead of apologizing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled down, adding that it was highly inappropriate to question the word of a four star Marine general.   Unfortunately, she didn’t elaborate on the level of commentary permissible by rank.  Apparently the press will have to figure out those protocols by trial and error.

There is a school of thought that believes that John Kelly and Trump’s other generals (Mattis and McMaster) have a secret pact to keep Trump from destroying the world.  Proponents of this theory argue that Kelly was just doing what he had to do to retain Trump’s confidence so as to stay in a position to keep terrible things from happening.  In my view, Kelly’s attack on Rep. Wilson was a little too heated to justify that interpretation. 

More likely, John Kelly is simply the latest example of the famous maxim that everything Trump touches turns to shit. 

It turns out that character really does count.  Who knew?