Consider this nightmare scenario: a military coup. You
don’t have to strain your imagination—all you have to do is watch
Thursday’s White House press briefing, in which the chief of staff,
John Kelly, defended President Trump’s phone call to a military widow, Myeshia
Johnson. The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in
this country would look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly
advanced his four arguments.
Argument 1. Those who criticize the President don’t know
what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military. To
demonstrate how little lay people know, Kelly provided a long, detailed
explanation of what happens when a soldier is killed in battle: the body is
wrapped in whatever is handy, flown by helicopter, then packed in ice, then
flown again, then repacked, then flown, then embalmed and dressed in uniform
with medals, and then flown home. Kelly provided a similar amount of detail
about how family members are notified of the death, when, and by whom. He even
recommended a film that dramatized the process of transporting the body of a
real-life marine, Private First Class Chance Phelps. This was a Trumpian
moment, from the phrasing—“a very, very good movie”—to the message. Kelly
stressed that Phelps “was killed under my command, right next to me”; in other
words, Kelly’s real-life experience was recreated for television, and that, he
seemed to think, bolstered his authority.
Fallen soldiers, Kelly said, join “the best one per cent
this country produces.” Here, the chief of staff again reminded his audience of
its ignorance: “Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them. Many of you don’t
know anyone who knows any of them. But they are the very best this country
produces.”
The one-per-cent figure is puzzling. The number of people
currently serving in the military, both on active duty and in the reserves,
is not even one per cent of all Americans. The number of
veterans in the population is far higher: more than seven per cent. But, later
in the speech, when Kelly described his own distress after hearing the
criticism of Trump’s phone call, the general said that he had gone to “walk
among the finest men and women on this earth. And you can always find them
because they’re in Arlington National Cemetery.” So, by “the best” Americans,
Kelly had meant dead Americans—specifically, fallen soldiers.
The number of Americans killed in all the wars this nation
has ever fought is indeed equal to roughly one per cent of all Americans alive
today. This makes for questionable math and disturbing logic. It is in
totalitarian societies, which demand complete mobilization, that dying for
one’s country becomes the ultimate badge of honor. Growing up in the Soviet
Union, I learned the names of ordinary soldiers who threw their bodies onto
enemy tanks, becoming literal cannon fodder. All of us children had to aspire
to the feat of martyrdom. No Soviet general would have dared utter the kind of
statement that’s attributed to General George S. Patton: “The object of war is
not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
2. The President did the right thing because he did
exactly what his general told him to do. Kelly went on a rambling explication
of speaking to the President not once but twice about how to make the call to
Myeshia Johnson. After Kelly’s son was killed while serving in Afghanistan, the
chief of staff recalled, his own best friend had consoled him by saying that
his son “was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew
what he was getting into by joining that one per cent.” Trump apparently tried
to replicate this message when he told Johnson that her husband, La David, had
known what he was signing up for. The negative reaction to this comment, Kelly
said, had “stunned” him.
A week earlier, Kelly had taken over the White House press
briefing in an attempt to quash another scandal and ended up using the phrase
“I was sent in,” twice, in reference to his job in the White House. Now he
seemed to be saying that, since he was sent in to control the President and the
President had, this time, more or less carried out his instructions, the
President should not be criticized.
3. Communication between the President and a
military widow is no one’s business but theirs. A day earlier, the
Washington Post had quoted a White House official saying, “The president’s
conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate
sacrifice are private.” The statement contained a classic Trumpian reversal: the
President was claiming for himself the right to privacy that belonged to his
interlocutor. But Myeshia Johnson had apparently voluntarily shared her
conversation with her mother-in-law and Congresswoman Frederica Wilson by
putting the President on speakerphone.
Now Kelly took it up a notch. Not only was he claiming that
the President, communicating with a citizen in his official capacity, had a
right to confidentiality—he was claiming that this right was “sacred.” Indeed,
Kelly seemed to say, it was the last sacred thing in this country. He rattled
off a litany of things that had lost their sanctity: women, life, religion,
Gold Star families. The last of which had been profaned “in the convention
over the summer,” said Kelly, although the convention in question was the
Republican one and the debacle with a Gold Star family had been Trump’s doing.
Now, Kelly seemed to say, we had descended into utter profanity, because the
secrecy of the President’s phone call had been violated.
4. Citizens are ranked based on their proximity to dying
for their country. Kelly’s last argument was his most striking. At the
end of the briefing, he said that he would take questions only from those
members of the press who had a personal connection to a fallen soldier,
followed by those who knew a Gold Star family. Considering that, a few minutes
earlier, Kelly had said most Americans didn’t even know anyone who knew anyone
who belonged to the “one per cent,” he was now explicitly denying a majority of
Americans—or the journalists representing them—the right to ask questions. This
was a new twist on the Trump Administration’s technique of shunning and shaming
unfriendly members of the news media, except this time, it was framed
explicitly in terms of national loyalty. As if on cue, the first reporter
allowed to speak inserted the phrase “Semper Fi”—a literal loyalty oath—into
his question.
Before walking off the stage, Kelly told Americans who
haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon
those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little
bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get
in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not
for any other reason than that they love this country.”
When Kelly replaced the ineffectual Reince Priebus as the
chief of staff, a sigh of relief emerged: at least the general would impose
some discipline on the Administration. Now we have a sense of what military
discipline in the White House sounds like.
- Masha
Gessen, a staff writer, has written several books, including, most
recently, “The
Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which was
short-listed for the National Book Award in 2017.
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De THE NEW YORKER, 20/10/2017
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