Quote (IceMage @ Oct 23 2024 08:45pm)
A weird quirk about Trump cultists is they think of everyone else as if they are as thin-skinned as Donald Trump.
John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Mark Milley all talk about how Trump is a serious threat to this nation. And the reaction from Trump world is that they are just jaded ex-employees of a bad boss. As if these men are as small and petty as Trump is, when they have served in combat and have climbed the ranks in the American military.
Why stop there? John Bolton did an interview today on hard talk getting roasted by Sackur for how the Republicans have moved on from neoconservatism and yet Bolton can't help but petulantly insult Trump.
I'd say its more of a quality of Trump that he has an infinite capacity to needle people into resentment more than their own shortcomings, and its the men of exceptional quality who can stay aloof from it.
John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Mark Milley, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, Chris Christi, etc etc- they are not men of exceptional quality. Do you think I respected them all in the first place? John Bolton would bomb his own mustache if he dribbled salad oil in it.
Kelly is out there denouncing Trump as a would-be fascist and dictator. We know from Trump's record that's not how he governs. Its a simple matter of fact he had the opportunity to do everything his critics foretold, and never did. The democrats did at every turn. We're in the midst of democrat's attempts to put him in prison
right now. Or just 6 feet under. And yet there are plenty of legitimate policy grievances and points of friction between someone like Kelly and Trump. The former has embraced a forever war neocon interventionalism and is guided by ideology, while Trump has no sincere ideological beliefs and has opportunistically embraced isolationism and economic protectionism and
peace. Trump has always surrounded himself with people of a wide swathe of beliefs and let them duke out their different visions and see who comes out on top, and its not like its some secret, he wrote a book on it. And we saw over and over again how such a contentious white house became a whirlwind that ejected all these men who let it get under their skin, or crossed the lines they set for themselves. Sometimes departing with good and justifiable cause and holding their heads high, sometimes disgraceful hissy fits.
When John Kelly comes out and makes predictions about Trump we already know are false, that tells us more about John Kelly than it does about Trump.