Today is Monday, March 11, 2024. A more damaging portrait – how can anything be even remotely considered “more damaging” to this Teflon Don II in which nothing has stuck so far – not even 91 criminal counts of wrongdoing! – has emerged of the “Reputin” frontrunner, Donald “Orange Hair” Duck from his former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly who was interviewed by CNN correspondent Jim Sciutto for an article entitled “Former advisers sound the alarm that Trump praises despots in private and on the campaign trail.”

The country should be greatly alarmed by this picture of the overweight golfer who has offered praise for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and even, more alarmingly, Adolf Hitler. According to Kelly, Drumpf has said that Orban was “fantastic,” that Chinese autocrat Xi Jinping was “brilliant,” that North Korea’s rotund little man was “an OK guy,” and that the architect of the Holocaust “did some good things.” This warped worldview by the doddering repugnican candidate for president would reverse decades-old U.S. foreign policy if – God forbid! – he wins a second term in office this November. This is what multiple former senior advisers told CNN.

Kelly said that Drumpf “thought Putin was an OK guy and Kim was an OK guy – that we had pushed North Korea into a corner.” Kelly continued, “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.'”

Drumpf offered lavish praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Orban while hosting him at Mar-a-Lago this past Friday, just days before sealing the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday. Trump has said about this strongman, “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban, adding, “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

This disgusting admiration for autocrats on behalf of the Stable Genius has been reported on before, but now Kelly and others who served under Trump give new insight into why they warn that a man who consistently praises autocratic leaders opposed to U.S. interests is definitely ill suited to lead the country in the Great Power clashes that could be on the horizon. Kelly told Sciutto that the reason Drumpf admires these leaders is because he envies their power.

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Herr Drumpf, told Sciutto, “He views himself as a big guy. He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”

Kelly adds that Trump was not a tough guy by any means, but in fact, quite the opposite. However, as Kelly points out, “that’s how he envisions himself.”

What really should result in voters dropping their jaws is Drumpf’s unnerving praise for Hitler, who led Nazi Germany during World War II. Kelly recalls a conversation he had with his dimwitted boss who felt that Hitler rebuilt the economy and how Kelly responded with telling him that Hitler turned the rebuilt economy against his own people and against the world. Kelly also added that Hitler did nothing good and that there was nothing good about him.

Kelly said this about his boss’s ignorance of the Holocaust and its consequences: “It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater.” He attributes Dump’s shocking dismissal of these events to “the tough guy thing.”

This bizarre admiration for Hitler went further than the German leader’s economic policies, according to Kelly. Kelly maintained that Drumpf expressed admiration for Hitler’s hold on senior Nazi officers. Trump actually lamented that Hitler, as Kelly recounted, maintained his senior staff’s “loyalty,” while Trump himself often did not.

Kelly corroborated Drumpf’s woeful grasp of history when he pointed out that Hitler’s generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, of which Drumpf professed no knowledge of. The former chief of staff thought Drumpf believed that his own generals would be loyal to him – “that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”

Kelly continued to badmouth Drumpf and how shocked he was that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send U.S. forces to wherever he wanted or to move money around within the budget. He added, “And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”

At a town hall organized by Fox News in July 2023, Trump said, “Think of President Xi: central casting, brilliant guy. When I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist: smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There is nobody in Hollywood like this guy.” Isn’t this positively pathetic from a presidential candidate for 2024?

In another interview with Fox News, Drumpf lavished praise on Putin as well, describing him as smarter than President Joe Biden. Drumpf blathered about these strongmen this way: “These are smart people, including Macron of France. I could go through the whole list of people, including Putin . . . . These people are sharp, tough, and generally vicious. They’re vicious, and they’re at the top of their game. We have a man that has no clue what’s happening [he is really discussing himself here, using that tried and true defense mechanism of “projection.”]. It’s the most dangerous time in the history of our country.” [Here he manages to avoid discussing his contribution to making this the most dangerous time in the history of our country.]

I love Jimmy Kimmel, by the way, who trashed the former president who critiqued his hosting the Academy Awards last night when he said, “Isn’t it past your jail time?” The crowd roared after Kimmel made this comment. As I said, I didn’t watch the Oscars last night, but this has to be a high point of the very long awards show.

Today we had our handyman/contractor over to work on several projects like putting together a very complex kitchen pantry storage cabinet that we ordered from Wayfair. Everything went well, except for one nerve-wracking moment when Elliot had the front door open to wait for “Jim” which spurred Atticus to try to get out. We almost lost him, except for my being able to pull his tail and get him back inside. Luckily, I was home at this point; I had gone out earlier to the Austin Street Diner and met my lady friends. Jim was detained because he couldn’t find any parking near our apartment building; eventually, he had to put his car in a garage on Queens Boulevard. Thank God I moved fast enough to get Atticus back into the apartment at that time. Who knows what would have happened if he fled his relatively new home? He would have never been able to find his way back home, I dare say. I think he did appear contrite after he made a botched attempt to flee. He stayed most of the time afterward in the bedroom and didn’t come out to annoy Jim while he worked. This was counter to how he would normally behave, in my opinion. Anyway, we’re very happy that the day didn’t end tragically as it might have. Could Atticus be unhappy here? we wonder. Is this why he tried to fly the coop? Too bad he can’t tell us in his own words. We think he’s quite happy here.

Oh, I’m happy to report that I finished another book, Kurt Vonnegut’s Dead-Eye Dick. I will have to begin reading this month’s reading group selection very soon, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. I will probably begin grappling with it in four days.

Stay safe and be well.