The Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan joined Ali Velshi earlier Monday to serve up a bit of history and reality for viewers about who John Kelly really is and why he should have been fired months ago.
Hasan's column today presents a reality check for all the journalists so quick to be sad that the "adult in the room" is leaving the building. For the record and for an accurate history, let it be known that he was not the adult. In some respects, he was worse than Trump, and in others, served as Trump's toady. He protected him and he followed orders.
Hasan helpfully provides a list:
How else are we supposed to describe his gaffe-laden, controversy-filled 17 months in charge? This was a chief of staff who told Fox News that “the lack of the ability to compromise led to the Civil War,” while praising the pro-slavery Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as an “honorable man”; who protected and promoted White House staff secretary Rob Porter — a man accused of domestic abuse by both of his ex-wives — and described him as a man of “true integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him”; who repeatedly misled the press about what he knew about Porter and when he knew it, which led to one of his White House colleagues calling him a “big fat liar”; who claimed that the “vast majority” of undocumented immigrants “don’t integrate well” and “don’t have skills”; who described immigrants who were eligible for DACA but had failed to apply for it as “too lazy to get off their asses”; who said that he wanted to reduce the number of refugees admitted into the United States to “between zero and one”; who defended the separation of migrant children from their parents on the grounds that the kids would be “put into foster care or whatever” and bragged that the “big name of the game is deterrence”; who signed a “Cabinet order” authorizing the (potentially illegal) use of lethal force by troops at the border; who lamented that women were no longer treated as “sacred and looked upon with great honor” but who was also accused of suggesting that women were more emotional than men... READ ON...
That's a great list. You should bookmark it for posterity when right and left-side reporters alike use Trump as the measuring stick and decide they are going to pretend Kelly was the Greatest White House Chief of Staff Ever To Live.
In the video, we recall Kelly's despicable treatment of Fredericka Wilson, and some of his hit parade of lies. As Hasan observes, it turns out "John Kelly was much more Trumpian than some of his fans would like to admit."
And like a rat abandoning a sinking ship, Kelly is scurrying out the door, along with Nick Ayres. Even Sarah Sanders won't appear in public to lie for Trump on a daily basis anymore.
The next time someone cries about the "only adult" exiting, stage right, give them this post and video and remind them that John Kelly was never a good person, and he's still not. Indeed, as Hasan says straight up, he's a bully, a liar and a bigot.
Bonus: Matt Yglesias says "Good Riddance to John Kelly"
