Rancid

It began, of course, with The Stain doing his usual Stain-like things:

“If you look at President Obama, and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls," Trump said Monday. "I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I am able to do it."

It was Trump's first public statement about the Niger incident, in which an Army special forces unit was ambushed by Islamic extremists in the western African nation. And it brought an swift and strong reaction from aides to former President Barack Obama.

"That's a (expletive) lie," said Alyssa Mastromonaco, Obama's deputy chief of staff, on Twitter, calling Trump "a deranged animal."

Of course previous presidents have called the families of soldiers killed in combat or in attacks similar to the one in Niger.  But The Stain got caught by the fact that, as of last Saturday, he hadn't made any such calls.  So he made his go-to move, which is to blame someone else, in this case Obama and other past presidents.

Of course, following his well-established pattern, when he finally DID make calls to the families, they went predictably poorly:

. . . a congresswoman said Trump told the widow of one of the soldiers killed in Niger that he "must have known what he signed up for."

Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., tells NBC6 that she overheard the call to Myeshia Johnson on Tuesday on a car speakerphone, as the two women were heading to Miami International Airport to meet the body of Johnson's husband, Sgt. La David Johnson.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump denied he said that, calling Wilson's account "fabricated" and adding, "I have proof." Press secretary Sarah Sanders clarified that there was no recording of the call, but that there were several people in the room at the time, including retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff.

Yet by midday Wednesday, the soldier's mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, had backed up the congresswoman's account. Jones-Johnson said she was also in the car listening to the call and told The Washington Post, "President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband."

I never the actual phone call in question, and clearly reasonable people can differ on whether The Stain was respectful in what he said.  But --- Sgt. Johnson's family were offended by his remarks, and that's really all that matters.

A sane person --- and anyone worthy of the office of the president --- would simply have issued a public apology to Sgt. Johnson's family and moved on.  But of course, we're not talking about a sane person worthy of the presidency, we're talking about The Stain.  Since Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) corroborated the Johnson family's story of The Stain's phone call, The Stain immediately went after her.

And he wasn't alone.  For reasons which are unclear, Chief of Staff John Kelly decided to attack Wilson.  In a speech which seemed designed to deflect attention away from The Stain's behavior, Kelly talked about his own son, who was killed while deployed to Afghanistan.  He also spent a lot of time discussing sacrifice and patriotism and a lot of other things that had nothing to do with the devastating effect The Stain's actions had on the Johnson family, but he did say "Let's not let this maybe last thing that is held sacred in our society, a young man, a young woman going out and giving his or her life for our country, let's try to somehow keep that sacred" --- a message which seems more appropriately directed at his boss than at Rep. Wilson.

Unfortunately for Kelly, he took his criticism too far, veering from indignation into personal attacks on Ms. Wilson.  He spoke about an FBI field office that opened in Miami in 2015, which was dedicated to two field officers named Grogan and Duke, who had died in the line of duty.  He attended the dedication, as did Ms. Wilson:

"Three of the men that survived the fight were there and gave rendition of how brave those men were and how they gave their lives. And a congresswoman stood up and, in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building. How she took care of her constituents because she got the money and just called up President Obama and on that phone call he gave the money, the $20 million to build a building, and she sat down. And we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned."

Kelly is obviously really, really mad at Rep. Wilson.  And who knows?  Bragging about bringing the pork home to your district is a bit obnoxious, and even disrespectful if done at a dedication ceremony for slain FBI agents.  But it's hardly the same as disrespecting a soldier's death to his widow, especially when she's expecting to be comforted.

But it turns out that Rep, Wilson's behavior wasn't either disrespectful OR obnoxious, because (try to contain your surprise) --- the bad behavior Kelly described never actually happened:

A video of Rep. Frederica Wilson’s (D-FL) speech at a 2015 FBI building dedication ceremony, taken by the Sun Sentinel newspaper and resurfaced on Friday, shows that the congresswoman did not brag about securing the funding for the building as White House Chief of Staff John Kelly claimed she had.

Rep. Wilson may be an empty barrel, but we certainly can't say that about The Stain or his staff.  To summarize: The big barrel of rancid pigshit that is our sitting president behaved like rancid pigshit.  As part of the damage control, The Stain rolled out a smaller barrel of rancid pigshit to defend him AND to make baseless attacks on the woman who confirmed The Stain's awful behavior.

But wait!  It gets worse!  Now that Kelly has been caught out in his lie, The Stain and his minions are falling back on the last refuge of Republican cowards: hiding behind the flag.  In this particular case, even though The Stain and Kelly are wrong, they're still right because, you see, it's inappropriate for anyone to criticize a former general:

The White House on Friday told a journalist who asked about errors chief of staff John Kelly made Thursday that it would be “highly inappropriate” to “get into a debate with a four-star Marine general.”

The militaristic language, used to refer to the civilian position in the White House occupied by the retired Marine general, came when the reporter pointed out that Kelly had inaccurately accused a congresswoman of claiming credit for securing funding for an FBI building in Miramar, Florida in 2015.

In other words, Kelly can lie and sling his shit however much he wants, and those in the line of fire just have to take it.  How unfortunate that the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson apparently doesn't receive the same courtesy.

So now we have the barrel of rancid pigshit press secretary telling us that we can't call the barrel of rancid pigshit John Kelly a barrel of rancid pigshit.  And that's the real takeaway of the story: In the current White House, it's rancid pigshit all the way down.

But wait!  It gets worse!  Because as entertaining as this story is, it's not even the worst part of The Stain's failed attempt at behaving like a human being. That prize goes to The Stain's interaction with the father of Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, who was killed in Afghanistan in June.  In this case, The Stain promised to send the father $25,000 --- but the check was never sent until just two days ago.  Coincidentally, the check was sent out the same day the Washington Post ran a story that the check had never been sent.

Funny, isn't it?  It's almost as if The Stain wanted Cpl. Baldridge's father to think he was a great guy, but then immediately forgot about him the moment he hung up the phone.  The White House claims "There is a substantial process that can involve multiple agencies anytime the President interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds. In this situation there were other agencies involved."  And that might be true.  But that excuse would be more believeable if The Stain didn't have a history of promising to give money to veterans or their families, and failing to follow through until the media shamed him into it.

Rancid pigshit, all the way down.  Remember this the next time you read or hear anything from the current White House --- and then forget whatever pigshit they sling at you.