HE CORRUPTS EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES:

[L]et's quickly review what happened in the latest iteration of this miserable pattern, last week. At a press conference, Trump was asked why he hadn't said anything publicly about the killing of four American soldiers in Niger, nearly two weeks after it happened. He replied by lying about his predecessors, claiming that they (especially Barack Obama) never called the families of fallen service members, while he did. The next morning in a radio interview, he claimed, "I have called, I believe, everybody--but certainly I'll use the word virtually everybody." This too was false. Then Representative Frederica Wilson told told reporters that when Trump called the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, he said the slain soldier "must have known what he signed up for," which came off sounding insensitive. Then Trump lied again, claiming that he never said that, despite the fact that the family confirmed it. He also said "I have proof" that Wilson wasn't telling the truth, yet another lie.

Which brings us to the person whose turn it was to defend Trump, Chief of Staff John Kelly. If there were anyone who one would have thought could work for Donald Trump and emerge with their integrity and reputation intact, it might have been Kelly. Not a vicious partisan or a striving careerist, Kelly moved to the White House from the Department of Homeland Security to impose some discipline and order on a chaotic situation, and has apparently been trying (with little success) to rein in the president's worst impulses by restricting his access to shady characters and the kind of information that will get him too riled up. Kelly's willingness to take on the extraordinarily difficult task of managing the angry toddler in the Oval Office has been widely seen as an act of public service, a final tour of duty from a career military officer done in order to prevent great harm coming to the country.

But as Kelly proved on Thursday, there is no such thing as noble service to Donald Trump. To join him means to descend into his sewer of division and dishonesty. Once you work for Donald Trump, he infects you like a disease, one for which there is no cure.

When Kelly began his statement to the White House press corps by describing the process by which a fallen servicemember's body is brought back home, people watching were moved, particularly since Kelly's own son was killed fighting in Afghanistan. But then he revealed that when Trump told La David Johnson's widow that Johnson knew what he signed up for, he was actually following Kelly's advice about what to say. That confirmed what was obvious from the beginning: Trump was trying to say something that in the hands of someone with a shred of human empathy might have been comforting, but coming from him it sounded insensitive and even offensive. But perhaps more importantly, it confirmed that Trump was lying when he repeatedly denied that he had said it.

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