It doesn't cost $60,000 to bury a fucking Mexican
As you are all aware, Donald Trump's former chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, spoke to both The Atlantic and The New York Times, on record, about Trump's denigration and disdain for the military.
Kelly spoke at length about the danger Trump poses, confirming on tape what he had whispered before: that Donald Trump is a fascist, divorced from any and all traditional American values. He has no belief in democracy, no belief in the republic, and is concerned only with his own aggrandizement.
The title of this piece, of course, refers to what is to me, a Latino, the most egregious episode which Kelly relates:
In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.
Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.
In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”
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In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”
According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.
Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”
"It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican."
This is the type of man whom far too many of our fellow-citizens revere, and want to see in the White House again. He is their avenger. He is their retribution for a world which no longer recognizes them as masters. He is the idol of every emotionally and intellectually stunted loser who bewails his or her fate.
He used Vanessa Guillén's murder to burnish his "soft side" during the 2020 campaign. See? He can be kind! He can be caring! He can be compassionate!
He was none of those things. "Fucking people, trying to rip me off." Fucking beaners trying to rip me off. Much like when he goes into a restaurant, orders food for everyone, and then skips out without paying, he saw Guillén in the same way: someone to use for the moment, and then discard once the cameras stopped rolling. He's a racist. He's a misogynist. He's a sociopath. He is fundamentally evil.
He has no redeeming qualities. Not a jot. Not a tittle. He used this young woman's tragedy merely to benefit himself, and promptly forgot her until the bill came due. "Fucking people." It's not just Mexicans, not just Latinos, who are "fucking people"; his followers con themselves that he cares about them. He doesn't. He will sink this country into a depression and not give one thought for the millions of his cultists who will suffer the ravages of no jobs, no money, no home. No food. He thinks that if he wins power again he will be able to rule with an iron fist, when what is more likely to happen is a descent into civil war, with his life not worth a plug nickel.
This country has produced many bad men. Joe McCarthy. Richard Nixon. Andrew Jackson. But never one on the level of Trump. Never one with the power to wreck this nation, and with it the world. Never one opposed to everything for which this country stands. Kelly confirmed what we knew, but with more detail than we dared imagine. Trump is unfit to be president. He's unfit to be an American. He's unfit to be human.
Of course, he wouldn't be where he is were it not for his willing dupes. Like Mayra Guillén, Vanessa's sister, who went on Twitter to defend Trump, and proudly proclaimed that she voted for him. The fact that she can read Kelly's testimony, and instead of rising to righteous anger instead defend the man who insulted her, her sister, her family, her community, shows that there will always be Quislings and kapos who think they're the "good ones". If the worst happens and she's sent off to the internment camps, Trump won't even remember who she was. She'll be just another dead Mexican, another pollutant removed from this country.
I take solace in the fact that there are more of us than them. That they are louder but we are determined. But I won't lie and say I feel no fear. I do. I do. But to do anything in life one must push past one's fears. One must not let fear cripple you. Then they win. It's what they want.
So we go on. We fight. We struggle. We win. We have no other choice.
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