Since 2001, only 0.45% of our population has served in the Global War on Terror. In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four years. What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our military is bearing. I could easily write a tome defending West Pont and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite institution, that separate from that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons, but I won’t. That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following: “David, you’re a smart guy. She was crying because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. She wasn’t crying because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was bawling her eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. I remember the day I found out I got into West Point.
in the late 1800s.Some brief but very poignant (and appropriate) remarks from Gen David Trump’s grandfather, Frederich, was born in Germany and came to the U.S.
The 75-year-old conservative firebrand has on more than one occasion falsely claimed his Bronx-born father Fred was from Germany. Trump later added that neo-Nazis “should be condemned totally.”įollowing that controversy, the German magazine Stern ran a cover story featuring Trump draped in an American flag while giving the Nazi salute. Trump’s position on white nationalist groups drew criticism following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the former president said there were “very fine people, on both sides” of a clash involving neo-Nazis and counterprotesters. Kelly is said to have struggled with Trump’s “stunning disregard for history,” which according to Bender, included what other top officials described to him as a “disregard for the history of any race, religion or creed.” The Guardian’s report claims that during their 2018 discussion, Kelly found himself reminding the president of which countries fought with the Allied forces and who sided with the Axis powers during World War II and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities.”
Kelly has reportedly criticized his former boss’s grasp on history, once allegedly referring to him as “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”īender, who has interviewed the 45th president since his electoral defeat, attributes his reporting on Trump’s alleged pro-Hitler statements to unnamed sources. Trump called his top aide a “great guy” after news of their split was announced. Kelly served 17 months in the Trump White House before leaving his job at the start of 2019. “It is made-up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.” “President Trump never said this,” Trump rep Liz Harrington told the Guardian. A Trump spokesperson calls that allegation “totally false.” “You just can’t.”Īccording to Bender’s book, Trump was “undeterred” by Kelly’s position. “You cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler,” Kelly allegedly said. The Guardian, which obtained an early copy of Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender’s “Frankly, We Did Win This Election,” writes that during a 2018 trip to Europe, Trump told Kelly, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”Ī “stunned” Kelly reportedly pushed back by offering Trump an abbreviated history lesson and assuring him that despite whatever short-term economic growth Germany may have seen under the rule of its far right wing, anti-immigrant, nationalist leader, the country would have been better off without all of the death Hitler left in his wake. A new book alleges that former President Donald Trump frustrated four-star general and then-White House chief of staff John Kelly by praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.