It was late last year when The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump had created an enemies list of sorts, with the hope that the Justice Department would investigate his targets if voters give him a second term. The list wasn’t exactly short, though one name stood out: former White House chief of staff John Kelly.
In other words, the former president, eying a return to the Oval Office, wants to use the levers of federal power to go after his own former right-hand man — who also happens to be Trump’s former handpicked Homeland Security secretary and a retired four-star Marine general.
But it appears the Republican isn’t prepared to wait until 2025 to go after Kelly rhetorically. Late last week, at his first post-debate rally, Trump told his followers:
“We’ve got a lot of television generals; they’re no good. … We had some, uh, like the dumbest of them all, General Kelly. He didn’t know, he was lost in The White House. That guy didn’t know what the hell was happening. He was like a lost, we used to call him a ‘lost soul.’”
The crowd responded with predictable booing.
Trump now bashing his former chief of staff John Kelly: The dumbest of them all, General Kelly. He was lost in The White House. That guy didn’t know what the hell was happening. We used to call him a lost soul pic.twitter.com/3eZmjGQDBU
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2024
This wasn’t the first time. Last October, 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.”
But why is the presumptive GOP nominee still bringing up the retired general, unprompted? It might have something to do with the fact that Trump appears preoccupied with allegations that he denigrated American servicemembers as “suckers and losers” — a contentious point during last week’s debate — and Kelly is the one who’s confirmed that Trump really did use the ugly language.
In fact, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff confirmed the story with on-the-record comments to CNN last year.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said 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.









