John Kelly, former President Donald Trump’s ex-chief of staff, has publicly corroborated several disturbing stories about his former boss.
In an interview with CNN, Kelly said that Trump allegedly hated veterans, citing a 2017 Memorial Day stop at Arlington National Cemetery where he was confused by service members who died in war.
“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Trump purportedly told Kelly at the time, which The Atlantic first reported in 2020.
The retired Marine Corps general went on to condemn Trump’s behavior towards war veterans in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” which was written by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said in his interview. “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.”
According to some of Trump’s biographers, the former president was shipped off to the New York Military Academy during the 1960s to instill some military discipline in him. He later avoided the military draft for the Vietnam War at least five times, including once for allegedly having bone spurs on his feet. Kelly joined and served in the Marines at that time.
Years later, Trump joked about his adventures with various women when comparing his own Vietnam to avoiding STDs. He also stressed that he did not agree with the conflict.
“Well, I was never a fan of that war, I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away. Nobody ever, you know you’re talking about Vietnam, and at that time, nobody had ever heard of the country,” he said at the time.
Kelly, who lost his then-29-year-old son to a landmine in Afghanistan back in 2010, further tore into Trump for lying to the public.
“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,” the ex-chief of staff concluded.
