On social media there were people who had put all their faith into Gen. Kelly as a moderating force on Trump. They hope he’ll keep us out of war and the like. But today proved that no miracles are forthcoming from Kelly. If anything he’s there because his sensibility is more Trumplike than the hopers thought.

Imagine, if you will, if Kelly really was a decent person who could be Trump’s conscience. If Trump got into another stupid war of words over a gold star family, even worse with a new widow whose husband died on Trump’s watch and the typical Trumpist boasts of being better than Obama. Kelly could rap him on the wrist and tell him to back it up and fix it! It’s a sensitive situation, apologize and get it behind you. That’s what a decent chief of staff would have advised and done.

But that’s not what Kelly did. Kelly defended his bosses’ stupid, reflexive attack on the Congresswoman and his childish denial of what he said on the phone. In all of Kelly’s words he actually admitted Trump said it, while enabling Trump’s non-apology. Kelly added gasoline to the fire by further attacking the Congresswoman and spewing a few nonsensical culture attacks that merely show he’s the kind of older white man that, hey shocker, voted for Trump. Looking backwards at a time that never existed, when “women were sacred”.

He gave Trump’s bluster a veneer of sympathy by whoring out his own military experience, his son’s death, to paper over Trump. Sad!

People will say that Kelly made that speech to impress his boss. Nonsense. He made that speech because he’s a kindred spirit of his boss. He thinks like Trump, just moderately more responsible.

It was a pretty damning performance showing that nobody is going to rein in Trump’s worst instincts. If you can’t get him to stop a fight about insensitive words to the widow of a dead soldier, if you actually keep it going, you are no hope at all.

P.S.: in Kelly’s version of the story it was the Khan family that demeaned gold star families, not Trump.

P.S.S.: In reaching for a negative thing to drop about Congresswoman Wilson, Kelly got the facts wrong (lied) about the incident.  Film from the Miami Sun-Sentinel proves it.  Kelly is now officially a big liar like his boss.