I mostly had forgotten about Mike (Payola) Allen, one of the founding geniuses of Politico and a career Beltway sycophant who would have been an embarrassment to the court of Louis XVI. Allen is now a founding genius of Axios and, on Friday, he went back to his only true strength in the news business to wit:—sucking up that was probably audible on the moon.

White House aides, beaten down by criticism from friends and beleaguered by the words and actions of the boss, got a rare moral boost from Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly as he offered a highly emotional and highly personal explanation/defense of Trump's outreach to families who lost young men in Niger… Kelly has managed to make himself the moral core of the Trump administration," a top White House official told us. "He just has so much credibility right now ... And he's in the best possible position, because he doesn't have to go out there and face the press every day. If he picks his spots he is now an extraordinarily credible and effective spokesperson on issues that need some moral clarity to them."

(You have to admire the raw courage of a White House staffer who demands anonymity to praise the boss. You don’t have to admire an alleged reporter who grants it.)

You will be shocked, I know, that the moral center of this administration* was pretty fast and loose with the facts in the course of delivering his rare moral boost. From the Miami Herald:

Kelly criticized Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson for claiming “she got the money” for the new building during the 2015 ceremony while he and others in the audience were focused on the heroism of agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, killed during a 1986 shootout with bank robbers south of Miami.



Thursday night, Wilson said Kelly got the story flat-out wrong. In fact, she said Washington approved the money before she was even in Congress. The legislation she sponsored named the building after Grogan and Dove, a law enacted just days before the ceremony.

“He shouldn't be able to just say that, that is terrible,” Wilson said of Kelly’s remarks in the White House briefing room, the latest volley in the controversy over Trump’s condolence call to a military widow from Miami Gardens, an area Wilson represents. “This has become totally personal.”

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Rare. Moral. Boost. From The Washington Post:

Perhaps Kelly, who also listened to the call, would be less stunned if he realized that Wilson's primary identity to the Johnson family isn't as a member of Congress. The Johnsons have known Wilson for decades — most of those years before the former educator moved to Washington to join Congress.... The deceased soldier was an alumnus of the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project, a mentoring program Wilson started for youths pursuing military careers among other fields. So were his brothers. One received a full scholarship to Bethune Cookman College and the other is training to become a firefighter.

And so are they all, honorable men.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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