In the rough seas of vulgarity and disgrace that we find ourselves in, some in Washington really are ready for any port in a storm. Take Mike Allen of Axios, for instance—perhaps the most Beltway of the Beltway pundits—who deigned to call Chief of Staff John Kelly "the moral voice of Trump's White House" on October 20. That same day, it emerged that Kelly had lied from the White House podium about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson's speech at the opening of an FBI field office in her district in 2015, smearing her as a self-promoter focused only on bringing money to her district—with no cause at all. It was entirely made up. Tough break, Mike.

Allen wasn't the only one praising "the generals"—Kelly included—as the saviors of the nation. So he won't be the only one with all that egg on his face today, after Kelly sat for an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News Monday night that will surely go down in the history books. In a remarkable exchange, the White House chief of staff defended Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man" and attributed the Civil War to an inability to compromise:

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Chief of Staff John Kelly praises Robert E Lee as "honorable man," says "lack of an ability to compromise led to the civil war," not slavery pic.twitter.com/GSuVRrGKlQ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2017

This is classic Lost Cause historical unreality, where the Confederacy was made up of honorable men and women who were defending "states' rights." But the rights they were defending were the rights of white people to own other human beings as slaves. The way of life they were defending was one where some people exploited the labor of others, through violence and brutality and intimidation, to enrich themselves and live all Gone with the Wind. Robert E. Lee was not an honorable man, he was a traitorous slaveholder who committed armed sedition against the United States of America so that he and others could continue enslaving human beings.

This rewriting of history underpinned the Jim Crow era, was pushed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, and is the kind of delusion that convinces people we need monuments honoring traitors to the republic in our public squares. It is irresponsible, pernicious, and facilitates evil.

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As Ta-Nehisi Coates also noted in a remarkable Twitter thread, the United States made a ton of "compromises" on slavery, starting with the "Three-Fifths Compromise" disgracefully written into our Constitution. That's the one where each black resident was counted as three-fifths of a human being, so that they were not granted the full rights of citizenship but were counted towards the population of states. That way, southern states would have larger populations and thus send more representatives to Congress, increasing their political power. The southern colonies demanded this as a prerequisite for joining the union. "Compromise" after Lincoln was assassinated, Coates reminds us, ended Reconstruction and handed the South back to white rule, beginning a period of white supremacist terror that lasted for a century.

But Kelly did not just defend Lee or boil the Civil War down to an inability of Both Sides to get along. He also doubled down on his attacks on a black congresswoman, Frederica Wilson.

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Announcing you will absolutely not apologize for smearing a black congresswoman in the same interview where you praise Robert E. Lee and try to whitewash the Confederacy? Not great, General. It's almost like Kelly shares more of his boss' worldview than the Beltway media types were ready to admit.



Except anyone watching without rose-colored glasses glued to their temples could see that Kelly is no saint, even relative to the rest of this kakistocratic administration. Before moving to the chief of staff position, Kelly oversaw the Department of Homeland Security as the agency turned into a deportation machine.

Immigration-related arrests didn't just spike by 40 percent. Kelly did away with prosecutorial discretion for undocumented immigrants, which had prioritized the deportation of those who committed serious crimes. Now ICE agents were essentially free to target any undocumented immigrant. He also expanded the definition of "criminal alien" to anyone who "committed anything that might be a 'chargeable criminal offense'" and "directed the department to pursue anyone who, 'in the judgment of an immigration officer,' posed a national-security risk to the country." Again, the new policy was that an ICE agent could essentially target anyone.



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Just because Kelly isn't on Twitter calling people insulting nicknames and undermining United States foreign policy doesn't make him a responsible steward of our nation. He is perfectly happy, if his comments in this interview are anything to go on, to continue perpetuating a culture of white supremacy—whether or not he's a true believer, or merely ignorant of the implications of his words. As with many in Trump's orbit, Kelly was a bona fide extremist until he stood close to the bright orange orb. The Media ought to try some perspective rather than grasping in the dark for camouflaged heroes.

Oh, and there's someone else who disagrees with Kelly's Civil War take: Abraham Lincoln.

And amid everything else, Kelly backed Ingraham's delusional call for a second special prosecutor to investigate the "Uranium One deal"—a scandal that was debunked months ago—and the fact that the infamous Dossier was partly funded by Democrats. Truly, we are indebted to this man as, all around him, the world slides into chaos.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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