October 23, 2024Gronda Morin

Generals Kelly and Mattis Who Worked for Trump, Share Stories About Him, Calling Him a Fascist

As a military brat raised in a family were military service and sacrifice was considered noble, I turned against the GOP MAGA ex-president when he disparaged US Senator John McCain’s military heroism in 2015 for being captured during wartime. He said, “I like people who weren’t captured.”  Senator McCain had been a navy fighter flyer who had been shot down by Vietnamese soldiers; whereupon he was captured, confined, tortured as prisoner of war for over 5 years, until his release in 1973.

In 2016, I left the Republican Party for having chosen the GOP MAGA ex-president to be their presidential candidate.

See: Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind/ NYT Magazine.

Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called Trump “the most dangerous person” ever and “fascist to the core!”

See: The General’s Warning – The Atlantic

Jeffrey Goldberg has been tracking multiple occasions when the GOP MAGA ex-president’s displayed disdain and a callous lack of understanding regarding military service that’s not an acceptable standard for the GOP MAGA ex-president who wants to be the US Commander in Chief.

The following are only a few illustrations regarding Trump’s contempt for the US military, detailed in the October 22, 2024 Atlantic article, Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had:’

Excerpts:

“In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered 2 months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.”

“Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.”

“Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

“A public memorial service was held in Houston two weeks after the White House meeting. It was followed by a private funeral and burial in a local cemetery, attended by, among others, the mayor of Houston and the city’s police chief. Highways were shut down, and mourners lined the streets.”

“Five months later, the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, announced the results of an investigation. McCarthy cited numerous “leadership failures” at Fort Hood and relieved or suspended several officers, including the base’s commanding general. In a press conference, McCarthy said that the murder “shocked our conscience” and “forced us to take a critical look at our systems, our policies, and ourselves.”

“In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense, was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

“According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.”

“Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

“Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump.”

***

“In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction didn’t move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.”

***

“On separate occasions in 2020, Trump held private conversations in the White House with national-security officials about the George Floyd protests. “The Chinese generals would know what to do,” he said, according to former officials who described the conversations to me, referring to the leaders of the People’s Liberation Army, which carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. (Pfeiffer denied that Trump said this.) Trump’s desire to deploy U.S. troops against American citizens is well documented. During the nerve-racking period of social unrest following Floyd’s death, Trump asked Milley and Esper, a West Point graduate and former infantry officer, if the Army could shoot protesters. “Trump seemed unable to think straight and calmly,” Esper wrote in his memoir. “The protests and violence had him so enraged that he was willing to send in active-duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet, he suggested we shoot them. I wondered about his sense of history, of propriety, and of his oath to the Constitution.” Esper told National Public Radio in 2022, “We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at General Milley, and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’” When defense officials argued against Trump’s desire, the president screamed, according to witnesses, “You’re all fucking losers!”

Dave Granlund / politicalcartoons.com

“Trump has often expressed his esteem for the type of power wielded by such autocrats as the Chinese leader Xi Jinping; his admiration, even jealousy, of Vladimir Putin is well known. In recent days, he has signaled that, should he win reelection in November, he would like to govern in the manner of these dictators—he has said explicitly that he would like to be a dictator for a day on his first day back in the White House—and he has threatened to, among other things, unleash the military on “radical-left lunatics.” (One of his four former national security advisers, John Bolton, wrote in his memoir, “It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping who would be happiest to see Trump back in office.”)

***

“Military leaders have condemned Trump for possessing autocratic tendencies. At his retirement ceremony last year, Milley said, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator … We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.” Over the past several years, Milley has privately told several interlocutors that he believed Trump to be a fascist. Many other leaders have also been shocked by Trump’s desire for revenge against his domestic critics. At the height of the Floyd protests, Mattis wrote, “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

“My reporting during Trump’s term in office led me to publish on this site, in September 2020, an article about Trump’s attitudes toward McCain and other veterans, and his views about the ideal of national service itself. The story was based on interviews with multiple sources who had firsthand exposure to Trump and his views. In that piece, I detailed numerous instances of Trump insulting soldiers, flag officers and veterans alike. I wrote extensively about Trump’s reaction to McCain’s death in August 2018: The president told aides, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he was infuriated when he saw flags at the White House lowered to half-mast. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” he said. Only when Kelly told Trump that he would get “killed in the press” for showing such disrespect did the president relent. In the article, I also reported that Trump had disparaged President George H. W. Bush, a World War II naval aviator, for getting shot down by the Japanese. Two witnesses told me that Trump said, “I don’t get it. Getting shot down makes you a loser.” (Bush ultimately evaded capture, but 8 other fliers were caught and executed by the Japanese).”

“The next year, White House officials demanded that the Navy keep the U.S.S. John S. McCain, which was named for McCain’s father and grandfather—both esteemed admirals—out of Trump’s sight during a visit to Japan. The Navy didn’t comply.”

“Trump’s preoccupation with McCain hasn’t abated. In January, Trump condemned McCain—6 years after his death—for having supported President Barack Obama’s health-care plan.  John McCain for some reason couldn’t get his arm up that day. Remember?” This was, it appears, a malicious reference to McCain’s wartime injuries—including injuries suffered during torture.”

See: As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator/ NYT

Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump: Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

11 comments

    • Hi!

      Thanks for your support and for this reblog. General Milley is also calling the GOP MAGA ex-president, a Fascist. A well-known historian on the subject of fascism is defining the ex-president as a Fascist.

      Even the democrat presidential nominee, VP Kamala Harris has jumped on this band wagon.

      Hugs, Gronda

      Like

    • Just saying, Suze, but once he is gone, however it happens, it will be too late to matter. I am not saying he should be “taken out,” but if that is what happens I won’t shed a tear, but nor will I dance on his grave. My feet might get contaminated…

      Liked by 2 people

    • Hi!

      Believe it or not, I’m getting sick over the idea that he might just win. But I’m choosing to believe that the majority of voters from left to right will use their good old common sense by voting for the democrat VP Kamala Harris to be the 47th US president.

      Then it’s time to get rid of this electoral college system.

      Hugs, Gronda

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Dear Gronda,

    Yes, I have attempted to submit a very long comment here, and the comment seems to have disappeared. The first two paragraphs of the comment are quoted here as follows:

    Hello! I have been away for quite a while, and now I am back to peruse your post and commment here.

    First of all, I cannot agree with you more. Thank you very much for broaching these highly consequential matters. Worse still, in recent years, many citizens have willingly aligned themselves with misinformation, disinformation, post-truth politics, demagoguery, plutocracy, oligarchy, ochlocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, narcissistic leadership, neoliberalism, globalization, clerical fascism and Trumpism. We can also agree that the ongoing chaos inflicted by the Trump presidency finally culminated in the infamous riot at the Capitol. You and I can be justified for being cynical, snide, snarky and facetious in characterizing Trump as the symbolic messiah who is going to lead his misguided supporters, sycophants and funders to glory on Earth and the promised land! It is often futile to reason with such misguided folks. Perhaps only when the country truly becomes autocratic or fascist, or when it plunges into a civil war, will such folks wake up, but then it will be too late. Consequently, any reasonable person can conclude that the USA has been plagued by ignorance, dogma, falsity, blind faith, spiritual stagnation and epistemological impasse . . . . .

    The comment contains about a dozen paragraphs. It also includes a weblink for you to visit one of my special posts that resonates with the spirit of your current post. It seems that the said comment might have been mistakenly identified as spam. Please kindly retrieve and approve it from your WordPress spam folder.

    To access your WordPress spam folder, go to the following URL:

    [insert your blog url here]/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=spam

    After unspamming the comment, you will need to approve it by going to the following URL:

    [insert your blog url here]/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=all

    This will allow you to read the very long comment and visit the said post. Please enjoy!

    Yours sincerely,
    SoundEagle🦅

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hi!

      It’s good to hear that you’re back.

      To answer you properly would take a couple of hours. This is what I previously wrote to Roger:

      It starts over 40 years ago with big money billionaires, millionaires, corporate titans preferring that the USA democracy be transitioned into an autocracy. These ultra-right folks are transactional in that they don’t care about air and water quality, raising the living wages for workers, providing for health insurance, and other major safety-net social programs, etc. They just want to be burdened with less taxes and regulations. These guys have been around forever, but their influence was strengthened with the US Supreme Court’s past 2010 (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) ruling that allows corporations to donate anonymously big monies with no limit to bolster GOP MAGA candidates’ chances for winning elections.

      Over a 50-year period these folks have been donating heavily to republican party candidates, now known as GOP MAGAs (the Grand Old Party Make America Great again cultists), buying influence so that currently it’s pro-business conservative anti-abortion justices who now own the US Supreme Court.

      These same folks are tolerating Trump because of his cult-like following of millions of voters. They’ve tried donating heavily to substitutes like Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis and Ohio’s US Senator JD Vance, but with no success. It’s Trump who’s capable of motivating his millions of cult-like loyal voters to go to the polling booth.

      In the USA, 90% of media outlets are owned/ controlled by only 6 corporations. Thus, we’ve been witnessing media folks becoming codependent enablers of Trump as they give the likes of Trump, the liar-in-chief equal footing with competent, truthful candidates.

      This election is the last viable chance for these transactional moneymen to accomplish their mission of morphing the USA into an autocracy. The conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 922-page manual is the blueprint for how to accomplish our US democracy being transformed into an autocracy with Trump, the wannabe dictator at the helm.

      It was some of these ultra-right-wing moneymen like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sachs along with others who heavily influenced Trump to pick JD Vance for the vice-presidency spot. These transactional right wingers have placed an unpopular candidate as the automatic heir apparent should Trump’s health takes a downturn. JD Vance would make a much smarter, sophisticated dictator. JD Vance is a follower of Curtis Yarvin who’s publicly declared that Americans have to get over their dictator phobia and who’s a true believer in the Project 2025 blueprint on how to completely overhaul the US government.

      1/3 of GOP MAGAs don’t believe the GOP MAGA lies as they just want to pay less taxes and to have free reign to run their businesses as they see fit. The want to see the end of government regulations that are designed to protect the public from harm. The other 2/3 of GOP MAGAs are cult-like followers. I hope that for their sakes, that the GOP MAGA ex-president loses the election by a wide margin.

      Hugs, Gronda

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dear Gronda,

        I have very much enjoyed reading your post and partaking in our conversation here. Thank you very much for your expansive explanation on how the USA democracy seems to be inexorably slipping into an autocracy. Moreover, the USA is not only plagued by the spectres of autocracy but also the vectors of plutocracy. According to Wikipedia:

        Plutocracy (Greek: πλοῦτος, ploutos, ‘wealth’ + κράτος, kratos, ‘rule’) or plutarchy, is a form of oligarchy and defines a society ruled or controlled by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens. The first known use of the term was in 1631. Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense.

        Usage
        The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. Throughout history, political thinkers such as Winston Churchill, 19th-century French sociologist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, 19th-century Spanish monarchist Juan Donoso Cortés and today Noam Chomsky have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict, corrupting societies with greed and hedonism.

        Examples
        Historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant republics of Venice, Florence and Genoa, and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). According to Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, the modern day United States resembles a plutocracy, though with democratic forms.

        Effects on democracy and society
        Economists Jared Bernstein and Paul Krugman have attacked the concentration of income as variously “unsustainable” and “incompatible” with real democracy. American political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson quote a warning by Greek-Roman historian Plutarch: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” Some academic researchers have written that the US political system risks drifting towards a form of oligarchy, through the influence of corporations, the wealthy, and other special interest groups.

        United States
        Further information: Income inequality in the United States § Effects on democracy and society
        See also: American upper class and Wealth inequality in the United States

        Some modern historians, politicians, and economists argue that the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression. President Theodore Roosevelt became known as the “trust-buster” for his aggressive use of United States antitrust law, through which he managed to break up such major combinations as the largest railroad and Standard Oil, the largest oil company. According to historian David Burton, “When it came to domestic political concerns, TR’s Bete Noire was the plutocracy.” In his autobiographical account of taking on monopolistic corporations as president, TR recounted

        …we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.

        The salient issues of democracy versus autocracy (and plutocracy) aside, there are many sobering implications of authoritarianism, which is a very topical area for exploring the many outstanding tensions between (the sociopsychological states of) sanity/stability and insanity/instability, affecting even the very existence and survival of humanity. In recent years, many citizens have willingly aligned themselves with misinformation, disinformation, post-truth politics, demagoguery, plutocracy, oligarchy, ochlocracy, kleptocracy, kakistocracy, narcissistic leadership, neoliberalism, globalization, clerical fascism and Trumpism. We can also agree that the ongoing chaos inflicted by the Trump presidency finally culminated in the infamous riot at the Capitol. You and I can be justified for being cynical, snide, snarky and facetious in characterizing Trump as the symbolic messiah who is going to lead his misguided supporters, sycophants and funders to glory on Earth and the promised land! It is often futile to reason with such misguided folks. Perhaps only when the country truly becomes autocratic or fascist, or when it plunges into a civil war, will such folks wake up, but then it will be too late. Consequently, any reasonable person can conclude that the USA has been plagued by ignorance, dogma, falsity, blind faith, spiritual stagnation and epistemological impasse . . . . .

        To make matter worse, even those who are supposed to know better, who are in the most privileged position or at the highest echelon, have displayed objectionable conducts, caused much disunity, and/or generated unwisdom. We have been witnessing so clearly the insidious nature of Trumpism, Machiavellian conservatism and inimical illiberalism perverting democracy for nefarious purposes and for justifying, obfuscating or muddying the waters of systemic sexism, racism, historical negationism, discrimination, marginalization and curtailment of civil rights. In a similar vein, one of my latest posts highlights not just the various traps awaiting us from the fallouts of the main event regarding the SCOTUS’ decisions on abortion and its striking down Roe v. Wade, but also how the capacity of laws and legislation to be legally valid, binding and enforceable in different contexts is both contingent (acceptable only if certain circumstances are the case) and circumscribed (restricted to certain roles or situations), given that the content, relevance and quality of laws and legislation are fundamentally filtered and moulded by class structures, social stratifications, cultural reproductions and communication frameworks as well as by the interaction between legal cultures, and the social construction of legal issues. Given your position and concerns, you are hereby invited to peruse my latest post entitled “🏛️⚖️ The Facile and Labile Nature of Law: Beyond the Supreme Court and Its Ruling on Controversial Matters 🗽🗳️🔫🤰🧑‍🤝‍🧑💉“, as I am certainly very keen and curious about what you will make of my said post published at

        🏛️⚖️ The Facile and Labile Nature of Law: Beyond the Supreme Court and Its Ruling on Controversial Matters 🗽🗳️🔫🤰🧑‍🤝‍🧑💉

        There is indeed a need for people to come together and meet the many challenges of our time before further chaos ensues. Speaking out against untruth or an unjust, dishonest or immoral act requires courage and conviction, especially in very trying, threatening or compromising situations. I have done so for decades, and have at times paid very high prices and even sacrifices for being truthful, being multidisciplinary, being interdisciplinary, going against the grain, being an outlier, being a visionary, being ahead of the curve, and/or being a whistleblower.

        Please enjoy! In the post, I have investigated the fundamental issues and also offered some far-reaching solutions, some requiring profound soul-searching as well as genuine compromise and rapport with the “other” through compassion and mutual understanding. I welcome your input and am curious to know what you make of my said post as well as your perspectives on those matters discussed in my post, where I look forward to savouring your feedback.

        Yours sincerely,
        SoundEagle🦅

        Like

  4. If Trump says he will pay everything, you know it will not happen — unless it negatively affects his lust for power. The “man” has absolutely no honour, or regard for commitment. He was ready to “hang Mike Pence” for not doing his bidding. He knows no loyalty except MAYBE to his offspring. Yet his cult members cheer him on.
    They know not what they do. i hope they never have to find out.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hi!

      The GOP MAGA ex-president may be rich but he’s a cheapskate who often stiffs others. He’s the kind that likes to look magnanimous but he’s all show, there’s nothing there.

      Hugs, Gronda

      Liked by 1 person

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