I respect your balanced opinion and I agree. However, no person in their right mind (which excludes Biden) would say anything like this at a memorial. Furthermore, no body would ever say such a thing to an active duty soldier, especially a General.
If Trump was willing to say what he said about POW's
publicly, I can only imagine what he might be willing to say
privately. Especially to someone he probably thought was sufficiently "loyal" to not repeat it. My guess is that he wouldn't have meant it maliciously, but rather just his own extraordinarily inartful/hyperbolic way of making a Patton-like comment to appear smart.
Trump's famous love for the Troops is well known.
Except POW's. And I don't think his "love for the Troops" is particularly famous, or particularly well-known.
This combined with the plethora of notorious debunked lies the Deep State and Democrats have been caught spreading about Trump, I have to evaluate this as a very farfetched scenario.[/size]
Let's face it, Trump isn't exactly the kind of guy who always thinks before he speaks. And in this case, it comes down to whether you believe General Kelly, or Donald Trump. One of the federal marshals at the courthouse for the trial I'm on currently and I struck up a conversation, and it turns out we were both Marine Corps officers during the same time period, and both of us had extensive contact with John Kelly when he was a Major/Lieutenant Colonel. I personally worked with Major Kelly pretty closely for over a year as a near-peer, and even spent Christmas at his home in Quantico. It's not something that is said about every other officer, but Kelly was universally viewed as a very sharp, and incredibly honest/forthright guy. Neither myself nor the marshal could imagine him ever just making something up out of whole cloth. It's just not how he every dealt with people, and he's about as straight a shooter as you can find. Probably why Trump selected him first to head up Homeland Security, and then to be his Chief of Staff.
I don't expect people who haven't known the guy to have the same view of him, but from my experience, it would be a hell of a lot more in-character for Trump to say something stupid and offensive than it would be for Kelly to just make it up, and tell people that publicly later. It's just not credible to me.
