NBC News got a look at the new forward of New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt's book Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, and how General Kelly was key in stopping Trump from attacking our foreign adversaries.
Schmidt describes General Kelly's plight at being Trump's Chief of Staff and what he had to do to try and manage his insufferable and murderous behavior.
What was truly scary was Trump's desire to use a nuclear bomb against North Korea.
"What scared Kelly even more than the tweets was that behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Trump continued to talk as if he wanted to go to war. He cavalierly discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea, saying that if he took such an action, the administration could blame someone else for it to absolve itself of responsibility," according to the new section of the book.
Kelly tried to use reason to explain to Trump why that would not work, Schmidt continues.
"It’d be tough to not have the finger pointed at us," Kelly told the president, according to the afterword.
Egads.
Trump was mute about how many people would be killed.
Later Trump brought up the idea of a preemptive attack against North Korea, and Kelly told him he needed congressional approval, which frustrated Trump.
Kelly convinced the so-called president he could prove he was the "greatest salesman in the world" by trying to strike a diplomatic relationship, Schmidt writes, thereby preventing a nuclear conflict that Kelly and other top military leaders saw as a more immediate threat than most realized at the time.
Vanity Fair writes "Incredibly, this wasn’t the only time he reportedly proposed attacking a foreign nation and then pretending the US didn’t do it."
Kelly spent almost all of 2017 dissuading Trump from attacking North Korea, then this happened.
...less than two months after the former guy reportedly floated the idea of attacking Russia and blaming it on China, we learned that, according to former defense secretary Mark Esper, Trump asked, on at least two occasions, if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs,” saying, “They don’t have control of their own country.” Told all the various reasons this idea was a no-go, the then president reportedly insisted that they could do it “quietly,” adding: “no one would know it was us.” Informed that, yes, people would know it was the US, Trump apparently responded that he would simply lie and say the US didn’t do it.
Digby writes in her post How Close Did we come to nuclear war?, "Trump released a video last week announcing that he would order the military to take out the cartels if he wins the White House again. So he’s still on it."
Trump wanted to bomb foreign countries and then lie and say it wasn't him, as if the world would believe him as his MAGA cult does.
That's f**king sick.
