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| John Kelly during an emotional press conference defending the President |
I find myself in the awkward position of defending the President again. Something I am not comfortable doing. Why I feel that way is beyond the scope of this post. I have explained my views about President Trump so often that it’s becoming boring already, and I’m tired of doing it.
Despite my feelings about him, I cannot help but to speak the truth about the hysterical way the media responds to him even when he does something good. There is every effort by them to find ways to make it look bad. This was once again made clear to anyone with an un-jaundiced eye.
Here is what happened. 4 US soldiers were slain in an ambush during what supposed to be a relatively safe non combative a mission in Niger.
The President was moved to call their bereaved relatives and offer his personal condolences. Congresswoman Fredercia Wilson (a Democrat) close to the family of one of those fallen soldiers, Sgt. La David Johnson happened to be present during a phone call to his widow. In what can only be interpreted as a cynical move to embarrass the President she quoted him out of context and preceded to publicly scold the President for what he said to her. From CNN here is the quote:
"(He) knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurts."
This was verified by a family member who was present at the call and not denied by the White House.
On the surface it might sound callous. Which is exactly what Wilson thought. She saw an opportunity to bash the President and did exactly that! But was it really callous? Not if you listen to Trump’s chief of staff General John Kelly. From CNN:
Kelly spoke at length, and in detail, about what follows the death of a US soldier at war -- and the painstaking, awful banality of how the government delivers the news to their loved ones. He talked about his own experience and told reporters that Trump tried his level best to communicate warmly, with empathy, in his own calls.
"He called four people the other day to express his condolences in the best way that he could," Kelly said of the President. "And he said to me, 'What do I say?' I said to him, 'Sir, there is nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families.'"
"In his way," Kelly said of Trump, he "tried to express that opinion -- that (Johnson) is a brave man, a fallen hero. He knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There's no reason to enlist, he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken. That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted."
Despite how one feels about him, the President is still a human being. He was clearly moved by the deaths of those four soldiers. And he is not exactly a wordsmith (to say the least). Kelly lost his own son during his tour of duty in Afghanistan. If anyone should be sensitive to callous remarks about that kind of loss, it is him. And yet you could see at his press conference just how physically upset he was:
He was "stunned" and "broken-hearted" by Wilson's role in conveying the details of the call to the media.
The media has been relentless in their fervor to heap scorn on the President – beginning well before he was elected. I can't really blame them. Trump has done his own share of bashing the media. So the media was only too happily to jump on board with Wilson now.
This story has been dominating the headlines. Why? Why is Trump’s condolence call more important than North Korea’s nuclear threats against the United States?
There can only be one answer to that. The media is obsessed with the President. Their bias is so strong that they have all but abandoned any pretense of objectivity (although they still probably think they are). It is one thing to criticize Trump for the stupid and harmful things he said and done in the past. It is another to never give him any credit, spin something good into something bad and then perpetuate it by over-focusing on it.
And now even Kelly’s emotional defense of the President is being smeared. First by Ms. Wilson and then by other partisan Democrats with the very same agenda as hers (and the media). Like Khizr Khan the Goldstar Muslim father who lost his son, a US soldier that fought in Afghanistan. Mr. Khan spoke at the DNC convention to much fanfare last year - attacking Trump for his prejudice against Muslims via promising to bar them from entering this country.
Understandably, Mr. Khan got a lot of sympathy at the time. I am not begrudging his speech. His son certainly deserves our everlasting gratitude and Mr. Khan deserves our sympathy for his loss. But it was later revealed that he was a Clinton campaign worker. Which in my view revealed his motive. Now he has done it again:
"Instead of advising the President that restraint and dignity is the call of the moment, former Gen. Kelly indulged in defending (the) behavior of the President and made the situation even worse," Khan said.
Nice.
It is grossly unfair to spin a heartfelt condolence call by the President to the family of a soldier that died serving his country into something bad. As much as I disapprove of how the President has handled his office so far, I am nevertheless disappointed in how the media has handled its own duties. No matter how much one hates the President – even if it for good reason - one has to be honest about him. The media is not. And they don’t seem to even realize it. And that puts into question their credibility on every story upon which they report.