So the “empty barrel” remark by WH Chief of Staff John Kelly is a sidebar to the reality of the military clusterf*ck unfolding further as Trump continues to golf and ignore the continuing evidence of his administration’s incompetence.
How hard would it have been for Trump to apologize for disrespecting a Gold Star family rather than ordering his staff to start a verbal fight to divert attention from the core insult of negligence due to incompetence.
Except Trump never apologizes, even when he does, so this is the new normal.
The “noisier empty vessel” expression goes perhaps to an etymology in Platonic discourse, but like many proverbs, is less about origin than it is about the social meaning in contemporary use.
There is disrespect and it is about power, but so far it’s going to be about hats and mispronouncing Niger. It is a small event in the larger malevolence of the Trump White House, and it should not have gotten personal but that’s the continuing thuggery of an administration focused on erasing a prior administration’s legacy rather than governing.
Eventually there will be an examination of abandoning La David Johnson’s body on the battlefield and the badly supported mission of 12 special forces operators in Niger. If investigations of events like Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire and the contractor issues at Benghazi are any indication, there are far too many agendas at work.
The greater problem of why one is fighting in a specific battle space cannot be second guessed as much as it becomes how much support should always be provided.
Kelly used the term to characterize Representative Frederica Wilson, who has been feuding with President Donald Trump over his phone call to a military widow this week, forcing Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to attempt an explanation at her daily briefing on Friday, offering only more ambiguity:
"As we say in the South: all hat, no cattle."
Sanders actually decided to make it about Wilson’s fashion choice of faux cowboy hats as well as referencing an expression often thrown at Southern politicians most notably George W.Bush.
As one RWNJ website has confirmed, CoS John Kelly has only used the expression in the context of Congress members who are PoC. It is more likely about William Shakespeare Henry V, Act 4 Scene 4 Page 4:
I never heard so loud a voice issue from such an empty heart. It’s true what they say: “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.” Bardolph and Nym had ten times more courage than this roaring stage villain, whose nails any Joe could cut with a wooden dagger, but they are both hanged. So would this man if he had the nerve to steal anything bravely. I have to stay with the servants, who are with our camp’s luggage. We’re sitting ducks for the French, if they only knew it, for there is no one guarding it but boys.
Empty barrel simply means someone that makes the most noise, a term that John Kelly has used previously when referring to politicians he feels are out of line. "And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise," Kelly said when talking about Wilson, whom he felt had violated something sacred by listening in on the call.
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Back in September, General Kelly used the same phrase "empty barrel" in reference to Illinois Democrat Rep. Luis Gutierrez after the congressman called him a "disgrace to the uniform" for aiding Trump with the fight against DACA.
“They can call people liars but it would be inappropriate for me to say the same thing back at them," Kelly told Fox News at the time."As my blessed mother used to say ‘empty barrels make the most noise.’"
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Because in warfare, political or otherwise, deranged animals are on “many sides” of the neocolonial ledger, and the Trumpian approach to diplomacy as austerity demonstrates another failure, since Jared Kushner can’t be everywhere.
The deaths of U.S. troops anywhere would test an administration’s public relations savvy. But the incident in Niger has turned into yet another publicity nightmare for Trump, who failed to even mention the ambush until nearly two weeks after it happened, and then defended the fact he had not yet called the families of the fallen soldiers. Sergeant Johnson was the last casualty to be identified after the ambush. Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a Democrat, who was reportedly in the car with his pregnant widow when Trump finally did call to express his condolences, claimed that the president’s remarks were insensitive, and that he told her that her husband “knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”
Perhaps Trump himself wasn’t quite clear on what Johnson had signed up for in Niger. The president rarely mentions Africa, and continuously delayed high-level Africa appointments within his administration, including the National Security Council’s senior director for Africa. Even now, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs post remains filled by a temporary appointment. Many of the key responsibilities of the administration’s Africa team are now being managed by much more junior staff than would be considered normal in different circumstances, Matthew Page said.
“[His administration] probably hasn’t even begun to think through or review or really even know the details of the U.S. military’s footprint in a country like Niger. One could say that they’ve been distracted by other things, but those things are also of their own making,” Page said. “I think what this illustrates backs up what a lot of us have been saying about Trump’s Africa policy, which is that it’s not even really half-baked. There’s no one home when it comes to Africa policy.”
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