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.

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.

Recommended

Maddowblog

‘There will be others’: Trump eyes additional targets after securing Comey indictment

Steve Benen

Deadline: Legal Blog

Trump-appointed judge says administration’s court claim ‘crumbled like a house of cards’

Jordan Rubin

“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, among other things, “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.

Trump continues to push back, though the fact that he’s publicly feuding with his own former DHS secretary and chief of staff should probably be a bigger deal in the 2024 campaign.