Donald Trump and John Kelly showed their true colors this week when like a plot line out of “To Kill A Mockingbird” it was decided to scapegoat Congresswoman Frederica Wilson on false charges utilizing racist tropes. It wasn’t just a single comment, either, it became a White House vendetta. The narrative persisted from the first idiotic tweet, to John Kelly’s vitriolic and untrue press conference, and then onto a follow up smack down by Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday. Sanders said, “As we say in the south, all hat, no cattle.” Congresswoman Wilson returned fire and the saddest part of this cause celebre is the commentary it makes on the state of our government and who we are in 2017. New York Times:
“The White House itself is full of white supremacists,” she said.
“I feel very sorry for him because he feels such a need to lie on me and I’m not even his enemy,” Ms. Wilson said of Mr. Kelly. “I just can’t even imagine why he would fabricate something like that. That is absolutely insane. I’m just flabbergasted because it’s very easy to trace.”
“They are making themselves look like fools. They have no credibility,” she said. “They are trying to assassinate my character, and they are assassinating their own because everything they say is coming out and shown to be a lie.”
But Mr. Trump and his top aides remained defiant on Friday, even after the video was released. In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Mr. Trump said he found Ms. Wilson’s criticism of Mr. Kelly “sickening.” The president called his chief of staff “a very elegant man,” and added that Mr. Kelly “is a tough, strong four-star Marine.”
Simply interpreting everything on its face, it is “sickening” for a black woman whose name we won’t mention to dare to say anything about me because I’m a white man and president, let alone my elegant, tough strong, four star Marine [general] who does this broad think she is anyway? That is exactly how the infestation of racists in the White House feels and that is how they are perceived:
Clifford W. Jordan, 60, the general manager of a nursing company in the same building as Ms. Wilson’s Miami Gardens office, said the criticism of the congresswoman smacked of racism and sexism.
“It’s almost like General Kelly was telling the congresswoman, ‘You don’t know your place, you’re not supposed to criticize the president,’” said Mr. Jordan, who is black. “That’s how it looks to the black people.”
Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat and the Virgin Islands’ delegate to Congress, said she was especially offended that Mr. Trump did not seem to know Sergeant Johnson’s name.
“He continually called that fallen soldier ‘your guy’ to his wife. That was his wife,” she said. “It was almost as if he doesn’t believe that we have husbands and wives as black people. And that I find very disturbing, that he would not give her the respect of calling that soldier her husband.”
The irony is that John Kelly playing the judas goat and making Wilson into the sacrificial lamb has all but backfired, except possibly with the worst of the die hard base. As much as he calls Wilson “selfish” and claims that she was grandstanding and as much as Huckabee Sanders ratifies Kelly and repeats. “It’s appalling the congresswoman continues to make the death of an American hero about herself instead of honoring the fallen who selflessly gave their lives for all of us,” and even worse, “As General Kelly pointed out, if you’re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes about yourself, you’re an empty barrel,” the desperate backpedaling by the White House has accomplished what cover ups usually do — it has only made things much worse. The cure has now done more harm than the original ailment and that was bad enough.
John Kelly lost a lot of credibility and stature this week. Huckabee Sanders only reinforced what a petty, venal Trump toady she is, and far from solving anything, political tensions have only been racheted up several notches.
All this is because the POTUS is incapable of comforting a grieving widow. “Well I guess he knew what he signed up for but I guess it still hurts.” Just look at that language on its face. Trump guesses. That’s accurate. He guesses it must hurt when somebody you love dies because he has no idea. Not only was he incapable of making a condolence call, he’s incapable of making a follow up call to apologize. Instead, his minions were summoned to do vengeance, and a member of congress was viciously slandered in order to safeguard the fragile ego of a very small and inadequate human being; Donald Trump.