Donald Trump tweeted, without irony, that Patrick Shanahan was resigning “to spend more time with his family.”
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019
With classic, if unintended understatement by Trump, yes, if ever a man needed to spend more time with his family, it is indeed Patrick Shanahan, for whatever good it would do. The story broke earlier today about how the FBI had been investigating a domestic violence allegation from 2011 involving Shanahan and his then-wife, but that was the tip of the iceberg. Eight years ago, Shanahan’s then-17-year-old son chased his mother into the laundry room and brutally attacked her with a baseball bat. That is the dark episode Shanahan is trying to bury. Washington Post:
In November 2011, Shanahan rushed to defend his then-17-year-old son, William Shanahan, in the days after the teenager brutally beat his mother. The attack had left Shanahan’s ex-wife unconscious in a pool of blood, her skull fractured, and with internal injuries that required surgery, according to court and police records.
Two weeks later, Shanahan sent his ex-wife’s brother a memo arguing that his son had acted in self-defense.
“Use of a baseball bat in self-defense will likely be viewed as an imbalance of force,” Shanahan wrote. “However, Will’s mother harassed him for nearly three hours before the incident.”
An imbalance of force, the man said? This is not only against the laws of man, it is against the laws of nature. This is Biblical, attempted matricide. And the laws of man are, just by the by, that somebody using deadly force on an unarmed opponent will not be deemed to be acting in self-defense. Not to mention that the “imbalance” here is a young male attacking an older female, who just happens to be his own mother. I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to state that this is pathological, if not psychotic behavior. In any event, Shanahan tried to double down on the statement and then gave up.
“That document literally was, I sat down with [my son] right away, and being an engineer at an aerospace company, you write down what are all of the mitigating reasons something could have happened. You know, just what’s the list of things that could have happened?” […]
“Quite frankly it’s difficult to relive that moment and the passage was difficult for me to read. I was wrong to write those three sentences,” Shanahan said.
“I have never believed Will’s attack on his mother was an act of self-defense or justified. I don’t believe violence is appropriate ever, and certainly never any justification for attacking someone with a baseball bat.”
Shanahan was married to his wife for 24 years. Their divorce file is 1,500 pages long and filled with incidents of fisticuffs, throwing food, objects, setting fire to things. The kid, William, sounds like a mafia hit man in training.
William, Sarasota police wrote, struck several blows to his mother’s head and torso and left her “to lie in a pool of blood” and then “unplugged the landline phone cord depriving the victim and [the younger brother] the use of 911 to render aid.”
As William fled the home, situated in an exclusive, barrier-island development called Bird Key just outside Sarasota, he “tossed a bottle of rubbing alcohol” to his younger brother and told him “you clean her up,” according to the police report.
William was charged with aggravated battery and tampering with a victim, which is an interesting spin on these facts, which scream attempted murder to any reasonable mind — but don’t get me started. An attorney friend of mine called me one day and said, “There are two systems of criminal justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool.” I believed the man then and I certainly believe him now. If this incident had taken place in a trailer park and not a ritzy gated community, the kid would be in prison as we speak.
Shanahan’s reaction to these events was to book his son a hotel room and hire a high-powered criminal defense lawyer. Now his words are that re-living this incident would ruin the lives of his young adult children. He seems hell bent on avoiding scandal, rather than deal with the shocking and gruesome nature of these events head on. His moral compass points in an interesting direction, wouldn’t you say?
Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors and certainly not in the homes of the wealthy and elite. It’s good that Shanahan stepped down. If he can’t manage what goes on under his own roof, he’s going to be able to manage conflicts on the level of the responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense? I think it’s reasonable to think not. What is truly appalling, is that he apparently thought that he could keep this under the rug.
Again, certain themes are repeated in Trump world, ala Rob Porter and Brett Kavanaugh: it doesn’t matter what you do, especially if violence against women is involved, it only matters what they find out. Form over substance, always, always, always. It’s only the optics that count, never the truth.
And I’ll say this much: I’m sure that Kimberly Shanahan, the wife, was no angel either. To stay in an abusive relationship for that many years gives us a glimpse at her mental landscape as well, and the portrait is not flattering. Point being, this is, on it’s face, the record of a very sick and violent family, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say “depraved” and it’s a wonder that nobody staged any kind of an intervention before severe bodily injury was inflicted on one family member by another. This is humanity at it’s most grotesque and also it’s most sad. While on one level I feel deeply for the tragedy of the Shanahan family, I also believe that it’s best that somebody with this level of personal problems not be appointed to high office in government. There are a lot of screws missing here, and that’s putting it mildly.
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Also begs the question: is there any Republican male who is NOT a violent, women-hating, creepazoid, pedo perv? Not necessarily all of the above at the same time, of course.
They love the trump s$it show, don’t they?
I can only conclude that there’s some reason these guys are showing up in Trump’s orbit, like a moth to candlelight. It’s some natural attraction. I mean, Porter, Kavanaugh, and now this guy — and this list is by no means inclusive, I’m just naming the heavy hitters here (no pun intended, but you can take a double meaning from “heavy hitter.”)
Not that I can see. The Republican attorney general of Indiana is now in a legal battle because he’s accused of sexual battery of four women who used to work for him — and retaliating against them when they complained. What a terrific work environment these guys create.
Only the best people…..
*smirk*
Oh, these are outstanding people. My God. Living in an environment like what is described in the Washington Post article is sick. Domestic violence is very ugly. A guy I was engaged to when I was very young got physically abusive and that ended the relationship. I don’t know what he was thinking — I guess he must have thought I would tolerate it, and he was wrong. It’s a control thing, you terrorize the woman into staying with you, obeying you, whatever. it didn’t work on me. It enraged and alienated me and destroyed whatever (little) feeling I still had for the guy. I was breaking off the engagement, and the violence was his refusal to accept that decision — and it only made it impossible for us to ever be friends. I hated his guts after that incident. It takes two sick people to tango on that level.
I’m sorry you had to go through that Ursula…..but I’m glad that you got out of it 🙂
Unfortunately, most learn those behaviors from their fathers…..it is a vicious circle, both literally and figuratively.
Maybe that’s where he learned it. And I saw violence in my own home growing up. My father would get insanely drunk and somehow, only the cat and myself had the sense to stay the hell away from him. My brother and my mother did not, and I don’t even want to recite here some of the stuff that happened. I used to have nightmares about my father maiming either my brother or my mother in an alcoholic blackout. Believe me, I had zero intention of living that way as an adult. And I’m not sitting in judgement on the Shanahans or anybody else who is in an abusive relationship. I’m saying that I ran from that kind of insanity because I realized it for what it was, which is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual poison. Total toxicity.
I even ran from intense emotional abuse, which my last long term relationship featured prominently. I was in that relationship way too long and thank God I got out of it. I just want to make the observation that people justify the reasons they’re in a toxic relationship. And I’ve heard all the reasons, money, the kids, bla bla. But it comes to a point where your sanity and your soul have to take precedence. And if you have to live in a smaller place, whatever, then you do it. And that’s what I did, so I know whereof I speak. Men and women can do terrible things to one another, and the effect on the children is unspeakable.
Ursula…that last paragraph, in my opinion, was a little uncalled for, specifically the “no angel” remark. My own mother stayed in her first marriage to my old man at least five years longer than she should have. It had a LOT of physical and emotional abuse going on but she wanted to stay for mine and my sister’s sake (which, yes, was the worst idea she could have had for that but that was her mindset). It took her own mother dying to finally get the message and it was every bit as hard as she was afraid it was going to be.
So…you understand why I would wince more than a little at the remark, yes? You said it yourself, we don’t know the whole story, just what we’ve been told.
Somehow I don’t think the first part of that paragraph came across the way Ursula intended. True, we don’t know the whole story of what went on in that household all those years but I’m sure Ursula knows that battered wives are often from homes where the man was guilty of wife and even child beating abuse. And also that once one is in such a relationship they find out too late what their partner (most of the time but not always the abuser is male) actually is, and fear the consequences of leaving. Indeed, experts who spend their professional lives helping such women make it a point to note the most dangerous time for a battered women is when she leaves an abusive man. Another thing to keep in mind is that bad as things are for any woman in such a relationship/marriage, when the abuser is a high income earner with status (i.e. executive in a company and “pillar” of the community) leaving them is all the more difficult.
That’s not to say the ex-wife didn’t have faults, including possibly lashing out herself at the kids over what she was enduring, but it’s more likely that the kids were also abused, and a son (in particular) the age this kid was might decide mom (who was being beaten before he was born) hadn’t done enough to protect him, and/or wasn’t intellectually and emotionally equipped to recognize the stresses his mom lived under & the limitations on her ability to protect him. In fact, even if in stern terms she tried to convince him not to “set his father off” he could well have become angered at her “rationalizing” dad’s starting to turn more anger/beatings his direction. So, rather than take on dad he went after his mom.
Again, we just don’t know. But I truly believe Ursula didn’t mean that part of her piece to come across as casually blaming the mom. I know sometimes I look back at something I’ve written even before someone points out something and cringed.
What I AM sure of is another point she raised which is that had he not had a rich and powerful father he’d have gone to jail for a sentence measure in years for aggravated battery, if not attempted murder. Beating someone with a baseball bat including blows to the head is attempted murder and he struck her repeatedly & not just in the head. He tried to beat his mom to death with a baseball bat. Somehow I think the notion didn’t come out of the blue, and that he’d witnessed his dad, our would-be/almost Secretary of Defense beating his mom senseless and more than once.
Even half-assed vetting would have uncovered this stuff and in any other administration the guy would never have been nominated for any position.
No need to cite the research to me, Denis…I lived it. And if you didn’t, be grateful…really, really grateful. I can also tell you in the right–or rather wrong–communities, you don’t need to be rich to get away with such abuse (though you are quite right when you say that it helps). Just have the right social connections in such places and folks will ALWAYS look the other way.
With that said, I too doubt that Ursula meant it as such. I also agree that baseline vetting should have snuffed this nomination like a candle flame with all this going on.
Gents, the baseline vetting you speak of has been suggested as well. There’s a story up now that says that either the White House knew and lied (here we go again, Rob Porter, redux, except worse) or that they were egregiously negligent. Here’s a few quotes I got from Raw Story on an MSNBC clip where a “former White House official, David Gergen” spoke:
“I think we all share in feeling great sympathy for the members of the family, especially that this all might become public,” said Gergen. “But the story doesn’t add up, that so far — listen, when his name was put up for deputy secretary, that launched an investigation of his background. He had to go through a background check. they obviously would have gone through divorce records and everything else.”
“So there were people who began to know — and it’s also obvious that the people who knew started sitting on it,” said Gergen. “We don’t know who they are. There are rumors about people on the Hill who knew things and sat on it. But today the president said he learned for the first time yesterday. That’s either a huge lie or represents gross mismanagement in the White House, or perhaps both.”
Look, I feel for this family, but Shanahan should have stood down previously. He was trying to skate by. Shanahan covered this up and I fear what else he might have covered up in his career, or what doings of Trump’s he might have felt compelled to cover up. This is a very bad sign.
I don’t know how to phrase it any differently. My point was that she was a participant as well as a victim — it’s common in an abusive family for all parties to be both abusers and victims, is what I have heard from my own therapists and from talking to friends who are therapists, over the years. I read the entire Washington Post article and the mother used to set fire to things abd throw holiday meals on the floor. Ostensibly she once walked into a room where Shanahan was trying to nap and started hitting him with her fists. I believe that these facts came out of the 1,500 page divorce file. The article said that she had not returned the Post’s request for a comment at time of publication.
Now, I get your point as well. And yes, God knows I have known victims of domestic violence, and it’s a topic I’m all too familiar with. I watched a documentary once, which a therapist I knew was giving to battered wives to watch. It featured a woman pleading with other women to get away from an abusive man, no matter what the excuse to stay — because half of her face was destroyed by a husband who set her on fire. She literally screamed into the camera, “You have to LEAVE NO MATTER WHAT!”
I mentioned the last long term relationship I was in (seven years, man, I must have broken a mirror in the Twilight Zone, believe me)– anyhow, his father was abusive, both physically and emotionally to his mother. He copied the emotional part perfectly and didn’t even realize it. He didn’t start out that way, that’s where he got to after four, five years and then it was complete hell, the last two years. I will never, ever go back to living that way as long as I live — and again, we’re talking about emotional abuse.
Point being, his mother told me once that she stayed with her monster of a husband (who loved Trump back in The Apprentice days, you believe this?) because, “She had never paid rent in her life.” I also know another woman, locally here, and she says the same thing. Ladies, I’ve got news for you: It’s cheaper in the long run to pay a little rent and own your soul free and clear. Again, I know whereof I speak.
By the way, Bareshark, I think it’s time to release you from our bet. Trump can’t pardon Manafort now, because of the Supreme Court ruling. Or, you still think he’ll pardon him anyhow? You call the shot on the bet, I’m just trying to be fair.
Given the Supreme Court ruling you mentioned, that’s a hell to the no on a Manafort pardon. Oh, I could see that thoughtless moron in the Oval Office SAYING he’ll pardon Manafort via tweet to stir things up. But that’d be as far as it goes.
And FYI, your lesson to the ladies was what my mother had to learn by watching cancer take her own mother. She was exactly half her mother’s age at the time, which she interpreted as half of her own life being over. She wanted the second half to be much better and barring a few ups and downs, it has been.
Re: Manafort. Maybe I’m mis-construing the situation entirely. What would be the point of Trump pardoning him, if he’s going to be prosecuted for the same crimes at the state level? Or, am I missing something key here?
As to the issue on women leaving abusive men — believe me, I’m not sitting on some high horse looking down. I should have thrown the guy I was with out four or five years before I did. The situation was very complicated — domestic situations usually are. What your mother woke up to, and good for her, is the fact that if a woman EMPOWERS herself to leave, then she can leave. It sounds like the death of your grandmother did that. Even the darkest clouds have a silver lining.
I know a woman who is still in a horribly abusive relationship as we speak. She literally has herself gaslighted into believing that she cannot pay rent and will be in the streets if she leaves this guy. They live rent free in a home that his family owns. Point being, the opposite of empowerment is also true. If you dis-empower yourself, then you guarantee that nothing will change.
These are not easy issues, that much I can say with absolute certainty. This is all very painful material, for those of us associated with either emotional or physical abuse in the home.
Sounds like your acquaintance is being the same lines my mom was. I hate that for her to my bone marrow. As to the Manafort thing, well, it’s Trump we’re talking about, the man who never met an idea bad enough to not give it a whirl. I could see him trying–and failing–to head things off by doing that pardon and say it applies to state. But no one’s going along on that crazy train. So it’ll just be more huffing.
Trump will pardon Paul Manafort regardless of any state charges from NY, count on it. AND, before you ask, there is no point, but Trump is no point, he will do it for spite, because he can, because he has a ‘toy’ to play with, and just to be an asshole he will do it.
This is not normal for anyone to bash another over the head with anything… Period!!! I live in a west coast community where a number of years ago a high school student, who was known to be unstable, woke up one morning and unexpectedly shot and killed both his mother and father. He then went to the high school he attended and shot many students and teachers. Several died and others were permanently injured for the rest of their lives. Both parents were teachers in the local schools and it was a tragic affair.
My question is: why didn’t the parents report their sons known instability and take the time to send him to counseling and prevent him from having access to guns or other known offensive weapons. It’s too late to answer that question for this particular instance but it’s time we come to grips with this type of violent behavior before others are attacked and injured or killed.
I’m someone who has served in the US military and am not against our right to defend ourselves with weapons either individually or collectively against those who do harm, but come on now!!! Let’s show a little common sense…There is a certain threshold where unstable individuals should not have access to lethal weapons of any kind…………..
At this point, I don’t think we have enough information to know who was the victim and who was the perpetrator in this situation. Initially, however, the son was a victim and ultimately became a perpetrator. For this, I believe, both parents were responsible, and it is the saddest part of this whole story.
You are an idiot. You right ignorant stories, drawing childish assumptions and your own conclusions based upon hearsay. Have you ever met this man, or any of his family? Did you contact any of your subjects for information or citation? This is what everyone should call…fake news!
The link to the Washington Post is highlighted in green. I don’t know how much more blatant the citation can possibly be. This is not fake news, this is the gospel truth — but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re a troll and you would probably be happier over at RedState or maybe one of the Nazi sites. Why don’t you go there?
Or, keep showing up here and this group of Democrats will eat you for lunch and that will be very entertaining. Your choice.