The enormity weighing down this election
Maybe we always knew it would come down to this question, if, in fact, it does come down to this question: Is Donald Trump a threat to democracy?
Nearly ever since he swaggered from the lobby of Trump Tower to the national political spotlight in 2015 – and most especially since the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021 – the question had been asked.
Last week, a man who worked for the former, and perhaps future, president in the White House spoke out. John Kelly, Trump’s longest serving (18 months) chief of staff, answered yes. Empathetically yes.
Speaking to reporter Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times, Kelly, a retired Marine general, said of Trump: “He definitely prefers the dictator approach to government.”
And this from a man who told Schmidt, “I would agree with some of [Trump’s] policies,” before adding, “It’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.”
During his time in the White House beginning in July 2017, Kelly worked alongside a chief executive who “never accepted the fact he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world, and by power, I mean the ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”
Many presidents have chafed under the constraints imposed on the office by the Constitution, by the separation of powers, by the rule of law, and the unwritten rules of American politics. But all but two have abided them: Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, and Nixon was enough of a patriot to cede the office rather than tarnish it and the American political system any more than he already had.
Trump is different. According to Kelly, “He’s certainly the only president who had all but rejected what America is all about, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything … he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.”
As for Trump’s assertion that the use of Army troops against U.S. civilians may be necessary, Kelly responded that it was “vey, very bad thing – even to say it for political purposes to get elected – I think is a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it.”
Four years ago, in September 2020, The Atlantic magazine reported on Trump’s disparagement of Americans killed in war. When, as president, Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, in 2018, he told senior staff members, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
Trump then referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at World War I’s Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed, the magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg wrote.
In his interview with Schmidt, Kelly confirmed Trump’s low opinion of Americans killed and wounded in combat. For one thing, Trump didn’t want to be seen with military amputees, telling his chief of staff that having them in his presence “is not a good look for me.”
Kelly’s son Robert was killed in combat in Afghanistan and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
On a visit to the cemetery on Memorial Day 2017, the then-president asked John Kelly to explain why these honored dead were, um, dead. What was the payoff?
“I thought it was one of those rhetorical … questions,” Kelly recalled. “But I didn’t realize he was serious – he just didn’t see what the point was. As I got to know him, this selflessness is something he just didn’t understand.”
His rants about John McCain were routine. The late Arizona Republican was famously captured and tortured during the Vietnam War.
Trump called McCain a loser, Kelly said.
Kelly quoted Trump as saying that “all those people were suckers, and why do you people think that people being killed [in combat] were heroes?”
“To me,” Kelly remarked, “I could never understand why he was the way he was – he may have been the only American citizen that feels that way about those who gave their lives or served their country.”
America can’t afford a president who rejects the foundation blocks of American democracy and American values, Kelly said.
All of this should be enormously consequential as election day nears. For millions of voters, however, Trump is their man regardless of the testimony of dozens of former aides and officials who now refuse to back Trump’s attempt to return to the seat of power – a group that even includes former Vice President Mike Pence.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.