Don't blame the rats abandoning the USS Trump

One by one they leap — or are pushed — from the foundering USS Trump, each offering a variation of the same plea: Don’t blame me.

Comes now retired Gen. John Kelly, the second of President Trump’s chiefs of staff to be discarded. Days before departing, he paused for a two-hour telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. It was an extended exercise in self-absolution.

Don’t blame him for Trump’s border-wall obsession. “To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Kelly disclosed, insisting “we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration.” (A day after the interview was published, Trump tweeted: “An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED.”)

Don’t blame Kelly for Trump’s fabricated “crisis” at the southern border. “If you want to stop illegal immigration, stop U.S. demand for drugs and expand economic opportunity” in Central America, Kelly proposed.

Don’t blame him for Trump’s claims that Hispanic immigrants spread violence and drugs. “Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people,” Kelly said.

And don’t blame him for the travel ban or the family separation policies, either. Rather, he, argued, he should be judged for what Trump didn’t do: withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan (which he’s doing now), pull troops out of South Korea or withdraw from NATO (which remain uncertain).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-kelly-doesnt-want-to-be-blamed-neither-does-anyone-else-on-uss-trump/2018/12/31/d4b272b2-0d1f-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html?utm_term=.160348d44a9c&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1