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john kelly
Why Is This Election Even Close?
Win or lose in November, more than 70 million Americans will likely cast their ballots for Trump. Most of them know who Trump is. They hear his vile words and heinous promises—and they like what they hear. They are the reason the election will be close.
Oct 29, 2024
The morning before Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27, Brendan Buck, a former communications aide to Speakers of the House John Boehner and Paul Ryan, appeared on MSNBC. Buck said that comparing Trump’s event with the infamous pro-Nazi gathering at the Garden in 1939 was “silly” and “completely obnoxious.”
“It is an arena,” a visibly angry Buck insisted. “I don’t think setting foot in Madison Square Garden makes anybody who goes there a Nazi.”
Professing to be a Trump critic, Buck said that comparing Trump to Hitler—and his views to Naziism—alienated undecided voters who might vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“That’s the kind of rhetoric that just tells people like ‘it doesn’t matter.’ They’re going to say anything they want.’” Buck continued. “I can’t tell you how much that upsets those people who are on the fence on Donald Trump, and they say, ‘They’re just out to get him. They’re going to say anything.’”
Now that Buck has seen the rally, I wonder if he is still offended at the Trump/Hitler comparison.
Trump’s Rally v. Hitler’s Reich
If Trump regains the presidency, he has told everyone what he’ll do with it. Take him at his word.
Lies at the Heart of Trump’s Sales Pitch
TRUMP: Rode to the White House on the wings of his “birther” lie about President Barack Obama. His lies at the Madison Square Garden rally flowed so quickly that fact checkers couldn’t keep up. And his media echo chambers are repeating those lies over and over again until they stick.
As Jonathan Swift observed, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”
HITLER: “[A]t a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…” (Shirer quoting Hitler, p. 22-23)
Immigrants Are Trump’s Centerpiece Lie
TRUMP: Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, portray immigrants as subhuman. In their fantasy world, immigrants are responsible for everything that ails American voters: inflation, high prices, exorbitant rents, housing shortages, crime, everything. They lie to feed that narrative.
Vance’s admitted that he made up his claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing household pets and eating them. But Trump still repeated and amplified the lie, turning the community inside out.
Trump claims that he’ll “liberate” Aurora, Colorado, from non-existent immigrant gangs he claimed run the city.
He calls America a “garbage can” of the world’s worst people—another lie..
He refers to immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. He says, falsely, that millions of them are criminals from “prisons,” “mental institutions,” and “insane asylums.”
HITLER: Wrote in Mein Kampf that he “was repelled by the conglomeration of races…repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere the eternal mushroom of humanity – Jews and more Jews… [His] hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples….” (W. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 27) And, similar to Vance’s views on the need to increase birth rates, he spoke repeatedly about the need to “increase and preserve the species and the race.” (Shirer, p. 86)
“The Enemy From Within” Comprises Trump’s Retribution Agenda
TRUMP: “We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala, and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat party,” Trump told the Madison Square Garden crowd, singling out Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “They’ve done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within.”
In fact, their only crime was to disagree with and criticize Trump publicly.
Pledging that he will be “dictator for a day,” Trump has said that he will use the military against his foes and tell the Justice Department to target his adversaries. He has vowed publicly to “root out” his political opponents and imprison them.
And he promises to stack the federal government with loyalists who will never disagree with him.
HITLER: “I will know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals [who, he falsely claimed, had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ with the onerous Versailles Treaty of 1918] had been overthrown.” (Schirer quoting Hitler, p. 70) He banished or executed those who crossed him and surrounded himself with sycophants.
TRUMP: During his first term, Trump stacked the courts, including a federal judge in Florida who dismissed a criminal case against him. Like many of his appointees, she is manifestly unqualified for her position. But now she is reportedly on a list of candidates to be Trump’s next attorney general.
HITLER: Co-opted the judiciary and then established his own special courts. Shredding Germany’s constitution, he alone became the law. (Shirer, 268-274)
Phony Populism
TRUMP: Promising to pursue corporate-friendly policies in return for financial support of his campaign, Trump has pre-sold the presidency. Examples abound: He promised to reverse climate initiatives affecting the major oil companies in return for $1 billion in contributions to his campaign; he now supports cryptocurrency (which he called a “scam” until recently); he adopted a new position favoring the legalization of marijuana; and he vowed to put Elon Musk, who is pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, in charge of slashing government regulation—which would create stunning conflicts of interest between Musk’s sprawling commercial interests and his government contracts.
Trump got surprising help from media owners Jeff Bezos, who killed a Washington Post editorial endorsing Harris, and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who refused to let his paper endorse a candidate, which also would have been Harris. At a time requiring courage, they buckled.
HITLER: Cultivated industry leaders who thought they could control the dictator as they supported his rise to power—until it was too late to stop him. They reaped short-term profits, but Germany and the world suffered devastating long-run consequences. (Shirer, p. 143)
Fear, Anger and Terror Are His Favorite Tactics
TRUMP: After losing the election, he encouraged the January 6, 2021 insurrection to remain in power.
HITLER: “I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses… For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.” (Shirer, p. 23)
Trump’s Role Models
TRUMP: Trump praises authoritarian leaders of other countries, including Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping. His longest-serving chief of staff and retired four-star general John Kelly reported Trump’s statement to him that “Hitler did some good things” and that Trump wanted generals who gave the kind of deference that Hitler’s generals gave him.
According to Kelly, Trump meets the definition of a fascist: “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”
Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to the country.” More than 100 other former top Trump advisers agree. Every day, the list grows.
HITLER: His professor described him as lacking “self-control and, to say the least, he was considered argumentative, autocratic, self-opinionated, and bad-tempered, and unable to submit to school discipline.” (Shirer, p. 13)
Here’s the Scariest Part
Whether Trump wins or loses in November, more than 70 million Americans will cast their ballots for him. Most of them know who Trump is. They hear his vile words and heinous promises to destroy democracy and the rule of law in America.
And they are the reason the election will be close. As Brendan Buck asserted, maybe they become upset at Trump/Hitler comparisons.
Or maybe it’s because they can’t handle the truth.
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Former Chief of Staff: Trump Said He Wanted 'Kind of Generals That Hitler Had'
The former president "never accepted the fact that he wasn't the most powerful man in the world—and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted," said former adviser John Kelly.
Oct 23, 2024
Two new reports out Tuesday detail numerous comments former President Donald Trump, now vying for a second term, made about his admiration of Adolf Hitler when he was in office, with former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly saying the remarks are part of what make it clear that Trump fits the definition of "a fascist."
At The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he asked Kelly about reports that Trump lamented that U.S. military officials were not more like "German generals" before and during World War II, who he said were "totally loyal" to Hitler.
"He told me that when Trump raised the subject of 'German generals,' Kelly responded by asking, "'Do you mean [Otto von] Bismarck' generals?'" wrote Goldberg. "He went on: 'I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, 'Do you mean the kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals?' And he said, 'Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals.'"
Two sources also told The Atlantic that Trump said in the White House, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had... People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders."
A spokesperson for Trump told The Atlantic that the former president "never said this."
Kelly also spoke at length to The New York Times on Tuesday, saying he was driven to do so by Trump's recent comments about deploying the U.S. military against "the enemy from within"—including political opponents like U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the prosecution of Trump in his first impeachment trial.
The former chief of staff, who also served as homeland security secretary under Trump, said the then-president "commented more than once that, 'You know, Hitler did some good things, too.'"
Previously, Kelly told CNN reporter Jim Sciutto that Trump said Hitler "did some good things." Kelly said he had asked, "'Well, what?' And he said, 'Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.'
In a video posted to TikTok, Times columnist Jamelle Bouie noted that "part of how Hitler made the economy 'good' again was by confiscating the property of Jews and giving it over Germans, or gentiles rather."
"That definitely doesn't sound familiar, doesn't sound like anything Trump wants to do," Bouie said sardonically. As part of their plan to solve the housing crisis, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have said they would carry out mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
The Times published audio of its interview with Kelly. Listen:
Trump "never accepted the fact that he wasn't the most powerful man in the world—and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted," Kelly said.
The interview was released the same day that Trump told Latino leaders at a roundtable discussion that he would use "extreme power" to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border and said President Joe Biden should do the same.
At a rally in Wisconsin after Goldberg's article was published, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said Trump's comments about Hitler and his generals made him "sick as hell, and it should make you sick, too."
If Trump wins the presidential election, he said, "folks, the guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness. A former president of the United States and the candidate for president of the United States says he wants generals like Adolf Hitler had."
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Public Citizen Makes the Case Against 'Both-Sidesing' the Trump Indictment
"While Trump and his allies continue their bluster, the media should focus on the facts of the indictment and the unprecedented obstruction it outlines."
Jun 20, 2023
A top official at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Tuesday issued a resounding repudiation of Republicans who draw false equivalencies between the alleged misdeeds of former President Donald Trump—who faces scores of federal and state criminal charges—and those of President Joe Biden and his son.
Earlier this month, Trump was charged with 37 federal felony counts related to his alleged possession and sharing of classified government documents after he left office. Additionally, the Manhattan district attorney's office in April charged Trump with 34 felony counts involving alleged hush money payments during the 2016 election cycle to cover up sex scandals.
Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled that Trump could also be charged for alleged "criminal interference in the administration of Georgia's 2020 general election" during the state superior court's upcoming term, which runs from July 11 through the end of August.
"Key Republicans and former Trump administration officials who have looked at the facts admit that these charges are credible, serious, and necessary."
While numerous Republicans have condemned Trump's actions, the former president and many of his supporters have called his prosecution a "witch hunt" while claiming he's a victim of a legal double standard. Trump's backers point to the classified documents improperly held by Mike Pence, his former vice president and 2024 GOP presidential rival, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and Biden—who is currently under investigation by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Some right-wing observers also contend that the plea deal announced Tuesday under which Hunter Biden, the president's son who holds no government office, will avoid prosecution—an outcome common to about 97% of federal criminal cases—proves a legal double-standard favoring Democrats.
However, legal and other experts reject such comparisons, pointing to Trump's refusal to hand over documents in his possession and his showing of the secret files to at least several people, an act that critics say could jeopardize national security.
"There is no both-sidesing this indictment. Key Republicans and former Trump administration officials who have looked at the facts admit that these charges are credible, serious, and necessary," Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.
Gilbert cites Trump administration officials including Attorney General William Barr—who called the Espionage Act charges against the former president "solid" and the evidence in the case "very, very damning"—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to underscore how even former members of Trump's inner circle acknowledge the validity and gravity of the federal indictment.
Former Defense Secretary Mike Esper said "clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal, and dangerous" for Trump to allegedly take classified national security documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and show them to aides, a writer, and at least one supporter.
Esper compared Trump's alleged actions to those of Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman arrested in April for allegedly leaking sensitive documents online.
According to Gilbert:
While Trump and his allies continue their bluster, the media should focus on the facts of the indictment and the unprecedented obstruction it outlines: Trump repeatedly blocked federal law enforcement officials who were attempting to retrieve approximately 300 classified documents that endanger our national security; and he directed his staff and lawyers to hide evidence, lie, and obstruct the FBI and grand jury in an attempt to keep them from recovering these documents—which contained highly classified national security information.
"As the overwhelmingly bipartisan response to the seriousness of this indictment shows, Americans are united in the belief that no one is above the law, not even a former president of the United States," Gilbert added.
Other observers have also decried comparisons of Trump and Biden's alleged misdeeds.
Equating Trump's alleged crimes with Democrats' purported misdeeds may hold water with Trump's staunchest supporters, "but it's false," Vox politics reporter Nicole Narea recently wrote.
"None of those figures ignored a subpoena to turn over classified material concerning highly sensitive matters of national security and then sought to conceal it from federal officials and their own attorneys, as is alleged of Trump," she argued. "And in fact, history suggests that if Trump complied with that request, as some of his peers did, prosecutors may not have pressed charges."
"The case against Trump is not so much about the fact that he retained documents he had no right to keep—but that he allegedly did so knowingly and brazenly defying the federal government while putting U.S. interests at risk," Narea added. "That puts Trump in a class of his own."
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Federal Lawsuit Naming Top Trump Officials Seeks Damages for 'Horrific' Trauma Imposed on Separated Children and Families
"Some may never recover, but we are fighting to give them a chance."
Oct 03, 2019
The ACLU and other attorneys filed a federal lawsuit in the Arizona U.S. District Court Thursday "seeking damages on behalf of thousands of traumatized children and parents who were forcibly torn from each other under the Trump administration's illegal practice of separating families at the border."
"We think that the family separations was so extreme and so unprecedented that if ever there was a case warranting damages, it's this one."
--Lee Gelernt, ACLU
The new lawsuit covers all forced separations from 2017 to present.
"The suffering and trauma inflicted on these little children and parents is horrific," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement. "Tragically, it could take years for these families to heal. Some may never recover, but we are fighting to give them a chance."
The administration's so-called "zero tolerance" policy was officially unveiled by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May of 2018 and, in another case brought by the ACLU, a federal judge issued a nationwide injunction against it and ordered the reunification of separated migrant families the following month.
In January of this year, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed in a report that President Donald Trump's administration had separated thousands more children from their parents at the southern U.S. border than was previously known--dating back to July of 2017, almost a year before Sessions publicly introduced the policy.
Announcing the case on Thursday, the ACLU referenced an HHS inspector general report from last month which found that "according to program directors and mental health clinicians, separated children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress than did children who were not separated."
"Separated children experienced heightened feelings of anxiety and loss as a result of their unexpected separation from their parents after their arrival in the United States," the HHS report continued. "For example, some separated children expressed acute grief that caused them to cry inconsolably."
The children weren't alone in enduring severe emotional trauma because of the administration's policy of ripping apart migrant families in a bid to drive down immigration rates through fear. According to the ACLU, "Several parents attempted suicide, and some tragically occurred."
Six-year-old Andres "was torn kicking and screaming from the arms of his father," Jacinto, "as Jacinto struggled to make uninterested guards aware of Andres' heart murmur."
--lawsuit
Some separated families have since been reunited, but others have not. The ACLU noted that "the administration's care and tracking for the separated children was so deficient that when a federal court finally ordered the government to reunify families, government officials were unable to identify which child belonged to which parent."
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, docketed as A.I.I.L. v. Sessions, include families from Guatemala and Honduras who were separated at Arizona-Mexico border. In one case, 13-year-old Karina was separated from her mother Lorena, "on Christmas Day, and kept handcuffed to control her as her mother was taken away and then subjected to the trauma of 16 months of separation, without any regard for her preexisting mental health issues."
Three-year-old Beatriz was taken from her father Jairo "after watching U.S. immigration officials violently remove another child from her mother. Later, Beatriz was physically abused by her caretaker while in the custody of the U.S. government," the complaint says. Six-year-old Andres "was torn kicking and screaming from the arms of his father," Jacinto, "as Jacinto struggled to make uninterested guards aware of Andres' heart murmur. Jacinto was deported without Andres, and Andres did not see his father again for nearly 10 months."
For the lawsuit, The Associated Press reported Thursday,
the ACLU wants class action status, meaning if it wins, thousands of families who are not plaintiffs can also be compensated. Attorneys didn't list a dollar amount requested, but have also filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security that seek $3 million per family. Those complaints could be eventually tied into this lawsuit.
"We think that the family separations was so extreme and so unprecedented that if ever there was a case warranting damages, it's this one," Gelernt told the AP. Gelernt added that he hoped families could use some of the money to get mental health assistance and "put their lives back together."
The suit names several former and current Trump administration officials as defendants, including Sessions; HHS Secretary Alex Azar; former White House Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly; former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen; and Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president.
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Slamming 'Corruption' That Has Allowed Rampant Abuse, Warren Releases Plan to Ban Private Prisons
"There should be no place in America for profiting off of putting more people behind bars or in detention."
Jun 21, 2019
Calling the federal government's close ties with for-profit prison operators "corruption," Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her plan to ban private prisons should she win the presidency in 2020.
The Massachusetts Democrat's proposal focused on the massive growth in the private prison industry over the last two decades. In that time, the government has turned a blind eye to human rights abuses within private detention centers, the price gouging companies like Core Civic and Geo Group subject inmates to, and as lawmakers have enriched their campaigns through their relationships with those companies--making the enforcement of any restrictions impossible.
"We didn't get here by chance," Warren wrote in a Medium post. "Washington works hand-in-hand with private prison companies, who spend millions on lobbyists, campaign contributions, and revolving-door hires--all to turn our criminal and immigration policies into ones that prioritize making them rich instead of keeping us safe."
Warren explained how she would ban private, for-profit prisons; stop contractors from charging fees for essential services; and ensure oversight of how detention centers operate.
The senator wrote that after ending all contracts between the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and other public entities with private prison operators, she would cut federal public safety funding for states and municipalities unless they agreed to use the money for publicly-run prisons only.
The senator's plan won praise from critics of mass incarceration on social media.
"We are glad to see that the prison industrial complex is finally part of the national electoral discussion on criminal justice, and that presidential candidates like Sen. Warren are addressing the issue directly," said Bianca Tylek, executive director of criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, in a statement. "The intention that roots her plan resonates with our mission to end the exploitation of all people touched by incarceration and offers concrete policies to help us get there."
Warren pointed to former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's new role as a member of the board at Caliburn International, whose subsidiary operates the largest detention center for unaccompanied migrant children, as one example of the corruption deeply embedded in the operation of for-profit prisons and the need to shut them down.
"Caliburn has profited directly off of the Trump administration's inhumane immigration policies--while children at [Caliburton's detention center] are reportedly kept in unsanitary, prison-like conditions, often for months," wrote Warren. "Now John Kelly is cashing in, too."
"This is just the latest example of private prison companies wringing billions out of federal taxpayers," she added.
Private prison operators like Caliburn, GEO Group, and CoreCivic spend millions on lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians like President Donald Trump, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry in 2016. The private prison sector's inmate population grew at five times the rate of the overall prison population from 2000 to 2016.
Trump's aggressive anti-immigration agenda has also been a boon for the industry, as Kelly's involvement in Caliburn demonstrates. CoreCivic and Geo Group raked in at least $800 million in 2018 in government contracts to transport and detain migrant children under Trump's detention policies.
"These companies got their biggest break yet when Donald Trump landed in the White House," wrote Warren. "With Trump, private prison companies saw their chance to run the same playbook for our immigration system. They poured money into lobbying for 'alternatives' to ICE detention centers. And boy, did it pay off. Private detention centers have made millions implementing Trump's cruel immigration policies, as the number of detained children quintupled in just a single year. Today 73 percent of detained immigrants are held in private detention facilities."
Close relations with the government have also helped the private prison industry to explode and essentially govern itself by its own rules in order to increase its profits--all with minimal oversight thanks to a loophole in FOIA which exempts private prisons from the transparency federal and state prisons are subject to.
The secrecy with which these facilities operate, Warren wrote, has resulted in human rights abuses including the illegal overuse of solitary confinement as a space-saving measure, a higher rate of assault than at public prisons, and under Trump's immigration agenda, the deaths of children in privately-run detention centers.
Warren wrote that she plans to close the FOIA loophole and appoint an independent prison conditions monitor to work in the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General. The monitor would be charged with making sure all prisons operate safely, without cutting corners, and would terminate their operation if they fall short.
"Washington hands billions over to corporations profiting off of inhumane detention and incarceration policies while ignoring the families that are destroyed in the process," Warren wrote. "We need to call that out for what it is: corruption. Incarcerating and detaining millions for profit doesn't keep us safe. It's time to do better."
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Warren and Jayapal Launch Probe into 'Rapid, Cynical, and Unethical' Profiteering Off Trump Child Detention Policy by Former Top Aide John Kelly
The former White House chief of staff and former head of DHS is specifically advising the company on child detention
Jun 06, 2019
Two Democratic lawmakers on Thursday morning launched an investigation into a former top Trump administration official who is profiting off the White House's policy of family separation and child detention.
"General Kelly's role in promoting and helping execute these cruel immigration policies remains a stain on his decades of public service."
--Sen. Elizabeth Warrn and Rep. Pramila Jayapal
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) sent an open letter (pdf) to the head of Jim Van Dusen, the CEO of Caliburn International, which recently hired former Gen. John Kelly, who ran President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security until January 2, 2019, and later became White House chief of staff.
Caliburn manages Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHSi). CHSi runs the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Florida as well as three facilities in Texas. All four CHSi-run shelters are used to house child victims of President Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy on migration. According to Warren and Jayapal, the Florida facility could receive $340 million in federal funding in just six months.
In their letter to Van Dusen, Warren and Jayapal delivered a blistering assessment of Kelly's time in the administration and questioned his role in the company.
"General Kelly's role in promoting and helping execute these cruel immigration policies remains a stain on his decades of public service," the lawmakers wrote. "It is outrageous that he now appears to be cashing in on those same policies as a board member for the company that benefitted from his actions as a government official."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Kelly joined Caliburn in early May, a move that was described at the time by Ned Price, a former advisor to President Barack Obama, as "a new degree of cruelty and awfulness" in the revolving door between government and the private sector.
Kelly, according to reporting in May from CBS News, is specifically advising the company on child detention.
While Kelly's new position is particularly galling, Warren and Jayapal took care to frame it as part of the bigger problem of the public-private intersect in Washington. In the letter, the two lawmakers touted their Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, a bill that would ban former DHS officials like Kelly from being paid by public contractors for four years after leaving office.
"We intend to keep working to make that plan law so that actions like General Kelly's rapid, cynical, and unethical shift from the government payroll to the contractor's payroll are no longer allowed," wrote Warren and Jayapal.
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'Sick, Dystopian Stuff': Former Trump Adviser Kelly Joins Board of Company Running Immigrant Detention Centers
"This one's particularly ugly."
May 03, 2019
In what one critic deemed a "nauseating example of the revolving door" through which powerful political players often move in and out of the private sector, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly joined the board of a company which owns some of the largest detention centers for unaccompanied children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
CBS News reported Friday that Kelly is now a member of the board of directors for Caliburn International, which runs one immigrant detention center in Florida and three in Texas.
Before joining the Trump administration, Kelly served on the board of advisers for an investment firm which now owns Caliburn. But critics said that in light of at least $222 million the company has received in government contracts to operate the detention centers between 2018 and 2019--as the number of children held in U.S. custody skyrocketed--Kelly's current involvement with Caliburn represents a blatant conflict of interest.
"The fact is that when he was in the White House, the government took action that swelled the population of people that were in these facilities, and that benefited his former employer," Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told CBS News.
Over the past year--while Kelly was serving in the White House as one of Trump's top advisers--Caliburn's subsidiary, Comprehensive Health Services, went from having a capacity of 1,250 beds to containing 3,200 beds in one of its detention centers.
On social media, critics expressed outrage at the news that Kelly is now helping to lead and profiting from a company that benefited from President Donald Trump's aggressive anti-immigration policies.
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Top 8 Ways John Kelly Was an Embarrassment as White House Chief of Staff
What the administration needed was a moral voice, someone who would push back against the conspiracy theories that guide so much of Trump's policy. Kelly was not that man
Dec 08, 2018
Trump announced Saturday that his chief of staff, John Kelly, will leave at the end of the month. It has been reported that the two men are not speaking. Kelly was often seen as a force for stability in the Trump administration, but as I warned when he first came in, he shared many of Trump's crackpot far rightwing ideas and therefore was not in fact a source of stability for the country.
1. Kelly thought that we are under siege:
"We are under attack from failed states, cyber-terrorists, vicious smugglers, and sadistic radicals. And we are under attack every single day. The threats are relentless."
As journalist Michael Cohen wrote in response at the Boston Globe, "Cyber-terrorists have never killed an American citizen, no failed state threatens America and more Americans are killed by lightning strikes than sadistic radicals."
2. Kelly believed that construction on Trump's border wall would begin by summer of 2017, and seemed to think that if it had, it would have been a good thing.
3. Nor is the wall needed or wanted by a majority of Americans. Kelly was almost delusional about U.S. immigration enforcement: "Nothing's been done in the past eight years to to enforce the border rules and regulations, not to mention many of the immigration laws inside of the United States."
Fact: The Obama administration deported at least as many people as the Bush administration had, if you use the same definition for deportations in both administrations. By sheer reported numbers, Obama deported some 2.5 million people during his eight years while Bush deported 2 million. They probably actually deported about the same number. Kelly's bizarre notion that the laws were not implemented since 2009 is flat wrong.
4. Kelly full-throatedly supported the Nazi family border separation policy of the Trump administration. On undocumented immigration, Kelly gave NPR an interview went like this:
Kelly: "But a big name of the game is deterrence."
NPR: "Family separation stands as a pretty tough deterrent."
Kelly: "It could be a tough deterrent--would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers."
NPR: "Even though people say that's cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children?"
Kelly: "I wouldn't put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of--put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long."
Kelly's doctrine of "deterrence" of undocumented immigration into the U.S. through family separation was undergirded by a special kind of sadism and ignorance combined. First of all, villagers in Honduras were not going to know about Kelly's policy. Second, they are so desperate that many will take the risk anyway. Third, it is wrong to pounce and take U.S. citizen children away from their mothers and fathers all of a sudden, giving them no time to make alternate arrangements. As for foster homes, with all due respect to the dedicated people who often run them, social science has proven that they are the biggest producer of a criminal class in the U.S. Children growing up without strong parental role models have a much greater chance of ending up in prison. Yes, that's right. Social science says that if you want a safe society, don't deport the parents of U.S. citizen children.
5. Kelly wanted to prioritize deportation of undocumented people who use marijuana on the circa 1910 grounds that it is a "gateway drug." It is not, or Colorado would be nothing but heroin addicts. Legalization of marijuana tracks with lower crime rates.
6. Kelly said of reports that Jared Kushner had met with the Russians during the campaign, before these reports were confirmed, that "any channel of communication" with Russia "is a good thing." Given Mueller's revelations this week, that particular assertion hasn't aged well for the general.
7. Then we should remember Kelly's bizarre performance during Trump's first attempt at a Muslim ban, when he gladly acted without any regard to the U.S. Constitution and claimed to have authored the policy (the Mussolini-loving Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller sprang it on him).
8. Kelly bizarrely defended Confederate slave drivers of the 1860s as having lived at a time before the evils of slavery were apparent to moral people. Haiti abolished slavery in 1804, Mexico in 1824, and Muslim Tunisia (!) in 1846. In fact, Tunisia tried to convince the antebellum U.S. to give up the foul practice, after its elite engaged in a modernist debate that instanced the Qur'an's singling out of manumission as a good deed. That's right folks, not only were Muslims in Tunis way ahead of Americans in the Deep South in the 1840s, but they were way ahead of John Kerry in 2018.
Oh, Kelly may have cut down a little bit on Trump's circus of chaos in the West Wing. But what the administration needed was a moral voice, someone who would push back against the conspiracy theories that guide so much of Trump's policy. Kelly was not that man. People praise him for his military service, but I think his positions, laid out above, profoundly contradict that ethos of the US military, and that he brought shame to the uniform he thankfully no longer wears.
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'Unconscionable' and 'Appalling': In Affront to Those Fleeing US-Backed Wars and Persecution, Trump Slams Door on Refugees
"The U.S. has a direct moral responsibility to open its doors, given that our own nation is an active combatant in many of the conflicts driving the global refugee crisis."
Sep 18, 2018
Launching yet another bigotry-driven attack on those fleeing wars and humanitarian crises in which the U.S. is playing an active and deadly role, the Trump administration announced late Monday that it is reducing America's refugee admission limit for 2019 to a record-low 30,000.
Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International, called it an "appalling" announcement.
"This must be perceived as an all-out attack against our country's ability to resettle refugees both now and in the future."
--Ryan Mace, Amnesty International USA
"At a time when the world is facing the largest displacement crisis in recorded history, it is unconscionable that the Trump administration would further dismantle the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program by setting a cap of 30,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2019--the lowest resettlement cap in the program's history," Win Without War director Stephen Miles said in a statement slamming the White House's decision.
"What's more," Miles continued, "the U.S. has a direct moral responsibility to open its doors, not slam them shut, given that our own nation is an active combatant in many of the very conflicts and humanitarian crises driving the global refugee crisis."
Unveiled by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday, the new "cap" of 30,000 refugees is 15,000 lower than the 2018 mark, making the new policy a major victory for top White House adviser and virulent racist Stephen Miller.
"The Trump administration already accepted a historically low amount of refugees. These new restrictions are outrageous."
--Rep. Pramila Jayapal
According to the New York Times, Miller joined forces with President Donald Trump's chief of staff John Kelly to push for an even lower cap of 25,000 refugees, and Pompeo ultimately accepted Miller's xenophobic push for a "deep cut."
"This is the lowest goal in the history of the program, and compounded by this administration's history of creating road block after road block for refugees to arrive, this must be perceived as an all-out attack against our country's ability to resettle refugees both now and in the future," Ryan Mace, grassroots advocacy and refugee specialist at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.
"Today's announcement demonstrates another undeniable political attack against people who have been forced to flee their homes," Mace concluded. "There is absolutely no excuse for not accepting more refugees in the coming year."
While the administration's official cap represents the highest number of refugees the White House is willing to provide a safe haven from violence and persecution, it is far from a requirement.
Thanks in large part to its inhumanely restrictive border and asylum policies, the Trump administration admitted just 20,918 refugees in 2018, less than half of the White House's 45,000-person cap.
But as the Trump administration has drastically restricted the number of refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, Vox's Dara Lind noted on Monday that the White House has not significantly curtailed European refugee admissions.
"While refugee arrivals from other parts of the world are down as much as 90 percent from Obama-era levels, resettlements from Europe--specifically, the former Soviet Union--have taken only a modest hit," Lind observes, citing new government data. "In the rest of the world, the Trump administration isn't going to come anywhere close to the 'ceilings' it set for the fiscal year ending September 30."
"The Trump administration already accepted a historically low amount of refugees," noted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Monday in response to Pompeo's announcement. "These new restrictions are outrageous. I came here at age 16 as an immigrant and today I am a congresswoman. Who could these refugees fleeing violence be if we gave them the chance?"
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From "Let's F**king Kill Him" to "We're in Crazytown": The Most Disturbing Excerpts From Woodward's New Book on Trump White House
"This is one of the most disturbing accounts of what is going on in the White House that we've seen yet. If one-tenth of it is accurate, we are, in a very real sense, in the midst of a national emergency."
Sep 04, 2018
Legendary Watergate journalist Bob Woodward has a book coming out next month that details the first year and a half of Donald Trump's presidency, and excerpts published by the Washington Post and CNN on Tuesday depict a White House in the midst of a "nervous breakdown," sparked by a man who top aides have referred to as "an idiot," a "fucking moron," a "professional liar," and "a goddamn dumbbell" who has the understanding of "a fifth- or sixth-grader."
"He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazytown."
--John Kelly, White House chief of staffAccording to the Post--where Woodward has worked as a reporter and editor for decades--the "thrust" of Fear: Trump in the White House "mostly focuses on substantive decisions and internal disagreements, including tensions with North Korea as well as the future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan."
But these substantive decisions and disagreements often produced startling moments in which the president revealed his total ignorance and lack of fitness for office.
"He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything," White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly complained during a small group meeting. "He's gone off the rails. We're in Crazytown. I don't even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I've ever had."
Here are some of the most revealing and disturbing excerpts from Woodward's book, which will be published on Sept. 11.
"Let's fucking kill him!"
After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was accused of carrying out a chemical attack against civilians last April, Trump told Defense Secretary James Mattis that he wanted to invade Syria and assassinate Assad, Woodward writes.
"Let's fucking kill him! Let's go in. Let's kill the fucking lot of them," Trump reportedly told Mattis in a phone call.
According to Woodward's account--which he says is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with top White House officials--Mattis told Trump he would get right on it, but then hung up the phone and told a senior aide, "We're not going to do any of that."
"You don't need a strategy to kill people."
During a meeting last July, Trump's national security advisers attempted to "educate" the president on foreign policy.
The gathering quickly went awry, however, when Trump decided to unload on his generals for attempting to discuss Afghanistan strategy.
"You should be killing guys. You don't need a strategy to kill people," Trump said, according to Woodward.
"Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jumpsuit."
Despite Trump's reported insistence that he would be "a real good witness" in an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the president's former lawyer John Dowd--who resigned in March--firmly believed that Trump would commit perjury if he talked to Mueller.
According to Woodward, Dowd explained to Mueller in January that he did not want the president to do an interview because he didn't want to "sit there and let him look like an idiot."
The president's attorney also worried that if a transcript of the interview leaked, as it inevitably would, people would say, "I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?"
Dowd later pleaded with Trump directly: "Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jumpsuit."
"He's this dumb Southerner"
Trump has a well-known habit of berating Attorney General Jeff Sessions in public, but according to Woodward, Trump uses far more abrasive and offensive language to ridicule Sessions behind closed doors.
"This guy is mentally retarded," Trump said of the former Alabama senator he picked to lead the Justice Department. "He's this dumb Southerner... He couldn't even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama."
"An administrative coup d'etat"
Reportedly alarmed by Trump's volatile combination of ignorance and impulsiveness, Woodward reports that top White House aides devised a strategy of stealing documents from the president's desk so he wouldn't see or sign them.
In Woodward's account, last spring former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn swiped "a letter off Trump's desk" the president planned to sign that would have withdrawn the U.S. from a trade agreement with South Korea.
Cohn later told an associate that Trump never noticed the letter was missing.
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