Dear John Kelly…

I’m sorry, but I just can’t take it. I’ve got to write something else about John Kelly.

I feel bad for this man, I really do. Here’s a guy who risked his life for his country on more occasions than even he can probably count and on top of that, lost his son in battle.

Now, he’s been reduced to tap dancing at the behest of an arrogant billionaire who, during the Vietnam War, received four draft deferments for being a college student and later a fifth deferment for bone spurs in his heels.

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is an affront to everything John Kelly stands for and everything his son died for.

Most obviously, Trump’s campaign is under investigation for what amounts to treason. So there’s that, right off the bat. Ideologically speaking, what the Trump campaign is implicitly accused of is the exact opposite of fighting and dying for America.

But beyond that, dying for your country represents the ultimate sacrifice in the service of others. Trump wouldn’t piss on a friend if that friend were on fire (although he would, apparently, watch a “friend” piss on a bed).

Donald Trump spends his time tweeting about how “unfairly” everyone is treating his overprivileged, ultra-wealthy children. John Kelly, on the other hand, once commemorated two Marines killed in combat in a speech in St. Louis without talking about his own son who had died just four days earlier in southern Afghanistan. Not only that, he actually asked the person who introduced him to avoid mentioning his son prior to that speech.

And I could go on.

Now, in what can only be described as a true testament to his willingness to give up everything in the service of his country, Kelly has resigned himself to a fate worse than death. In the interest of protecting America from what he almost surely realizes is an existential threat far greater than any foreign adversary, he’s going to literally swallow his pride and degrade himself in public just so he can avoid getting fired because he realizes that if he is fired, there’s one less person standing between Donald Trump and America.

Kelly is to be commended for his sacrifice. Again, this is undoubtedly (and he even said as much earlier this month) the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do in the service of America. And John Kelly being John Kelly, he’s going to soldier through it (figuratively and literally) because he knows Bob Corker is correct to say that he is one of only three men separating the rest of us from “chaos.”

Unfortunately, the costs for Kelly are mounting. It is impossible to reconcile the stoic fortitude it took to avoid mentioning Robert Kelly in a speech four days after he was killed with a reality TV show host using Robert as political cannon fodder. Trump bringing Robert into his personal war with the media would have been bad enough on its own, but when you consider that Robert is now being posthumously used to defend a spurious claim about previous Presidents not respecting the families of fallen soldiers, the whole thing becomes so egregious that you have to marvel at Kelly’s restraint.

And as if Trump hadn’t already put Kelly through enough this week (and really, the General’s entire stint as Chief of Staff has been a daily trial by fire), on Thursday the President compelled Kelly to publicly confirm that Barack Obama did not call the family after Robert’s death.

It also seems likely that Kelly’s professed disgust for Rep. Frederica Wilson was at least partially scripted by Trump. I cannot imagine that a man like John Kelly would be angry with a lawmaker who was, political motivations aside, defending the honor of a dead solider.

By definition, defending the indefensible leads to mistakes. And so it was with Kelly’s Thursday press conference. Kelly decried what he claimed was a nationwide lack of respect for women. Specifically, he said this:

When I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred and looked upon with great honor. That’s not the case anymore as we see from recent cases.

Part of that was probably sincere. But again, it seems highly unlikely that a man with Kelly’s predisposition to Spartan discipline would walk up to a lectern and start making off-the-cuff references to Harvey Weinstein. Furthermore, the man who put him up to the press conference in the first place was caught on tape bragging about “grabbin’ ’em by the pussy.”

So Kelly is right, it’s “not the case anymore” that men respect women in America and “recent cases” do indeed confirm it. Just this week, in fact, we learned that Trump’s campaign was subpoenaed for all documents related to a woman who claims Trump sexually assaulted her. This “small”-ish oversight didn’t go unnoticed and indeed, Kelly was mercilessly ridiculed on Twitter as soon as he said it.

So here’s our message to John Kelly:

Dear General Kelly,

We thank you wholeheartedly for your latest – and, with the exception of losing your son – likely greatest, sacrifice in the service of this country. That sacrifice being your willingness to subjugate your own dignity and honor to your overriding instinct to protect the country at all costs.

But John, you’ve given up enough for America. Don’t let your name be sullied any further for the sake of a fucking moron.