Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, didn’t parse his words in a statement to CNN about his former boss—grilling the former president as he confirmed rumors about some of the nastiest things Trump ever muttered about U.S. veterans. Kelly’s remarks are the first on-the-record confirmation for a slew of comments by Trump that was revealed in a 2020 story by The Atlantic, which claimed Trump called veterans “suckers” and “losers,” but attributed knowledge of the insults to anonymous sources. Those anonymous insiders also told the magazine that Trump, who reportedly dodged being drafted into the Vietnam War himself, had asked his staff not to include wounded veterans in a military parade in 2018 because “nobody wants to see” amputees. Kelly confirmed those comments as being true as well as other troubling remarks by Trump in his statement to CNN, which he closed with, “God help us.”
