A Liberal in Trumpistan: Think Trump is a Menace? The Generals Concur.

I felt this post was important enough to publish separately. You are not alone if you consider Donald J. Trump a threat to the rule of law, to peaceful protesters, and the U.S. Constitution.

After Trump ordered troops to attack peaceful protesters outside the White House, top U.S. military leaders grew concerned.

The president later marched a few hundred yards, over to a nearby church and posed, trying to look imposing, with a bible in his hand.

Trump and the Bible he never reads.

June 4, 2020: You could tell today that Donald was having a tough stretch, but not because the death toll from the coronavirus passed 100,000.

Nor because protests continued to spread across the nation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

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“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”

Former Secretary of Defense and Ret. Gen. James Mattis

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What shook Trump was a White House announcement that there had been a schedule change. The president was canceling a weekend trip to what he calls his “summer White House.” Trump would not be going to his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, even though he had a hankering to play golf.

Suddenly, “tragedy” hit the president hard. He’d have to stick around the White House and pretend to do his job.

SINCE TRUMP suggested he might use active duty military forces to clear the streets of America, many retired U.S. military leaders, and even a few GOP politicians with scruples, have felt honor bound to speak out against a president with pronounced dictatorial inclinations.

First, of course, you had to wade through the cowards.

On Wednesday, June 3, NBC’s Kristen Welker tried to get Republican senators to respond to the question, “Do you support the president’s decision to clear out peaceful protestors near the White House?”

“Didn’t really see it,” said Trump pal, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Give that man a white cane!

“I’m late for lunch,” a famished Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio explained. Then he buzzed past like a man on a mission to order fries, with some ketchup.

Asked about the president’s actions, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell dodged the chance to stand up for the rights of all Americans. He said he was “not going to critique other’s performances.” If he had been dressed in a giant chicken costume, it could not have been more appropriate.

Sen. Tim Scott, the only African American GOP senator, was both correct in what he said and cowardly. Asked that same question, during a morning gathering – was Trump right to do what he did – Scott said, he wasn’t. “But obviously, if your question is should you use tear gas to clear a path so the president can go have a photo op, the answer is no.” When NBC News asked him to elaborate on his answer, Sen. Scott said he had already “said too much.”

When in fact, he had said too little.

IF COURAGE was absent in the ranks of Republican politicians, a chorus of criticism was heard from a welcome direction. First to raise the battle cry, was Trump’s former Secretary of Defense and former Marine commandant, Gen. James Mattis. Writing in The Atlantic, he offered stark warning. “I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” he began. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court,” he noted. “This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand – one that all of us should be able to get behind.”

U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington D.C.

Mattis continued:

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], with military leadership standing alongside.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski admitted what many Republicans had to be thinking but lacked fortitude to express. “I thought General Mattis’ words were true and honest and necessary and overdue,” she said. “Perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.”

Asked by a reporter if she could still support Trump, she replied, “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”

Trump responded exactly as you might expect. He attacked Murkowski on Twitter, vowing revenge. “Few people know where they’ll be in two years from now, but I do, in the Great State of Alaska (which I love) campaigning against Senator Lisa Murkowski.” In fact, he made it clear that when he retaliated, he wouldn’t care who ran against Murkowski. “Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing. If you have a pulse, I’m with you!”

So, for example, he’d endorse a cannibal? Or a man accused of molesting teenage girls, so long as either of them had a pulse?

(See: Judge Roy Moore.)

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/6/23): We know what happened in 2022, when Murkowski ran again. She defeated Trump’s favored choice, and gained a new six-year term in the U.S. Senate.

“No president ever is a dictator or a king.”

TRUMP WASTED no time before bragging, again on Twitter, about “firing” Mattis. He tweeted about how much pleasure that gave him.

(An orgasm, maybe?)

This time the criticism did not abate. A second retired Marine general joined the fight, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly. Mattis, he told reporters, resigned. “The president did not fire him. He did not ask for his resignation,” Kelly said. “The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened or is confused.”

(A nice way of saying: Trump is a liar.)

Later, Kelly elaborated in an interview, making clear on whose side he came down:

He’s quite a man, General Jim Mattis, and for him to do that tells you where he is relative to the concern he has for our country.

I agree with him. I think we need to step back from the politics. I think we need to reestablish, and I’m not a constitutional scholar but boy do I read a lot and I’ve re-read an awful lot in the last three weeks about the thinking that made our Constitution what it is, the men who made that Constitution, who developed that Constitution. And the separation of powers is very, very, very important. No president ever is a dictator or a king.

Trump erupted once more. He insisted that Kelly was never part of his White House “inner circle.” The job was too tough for him. Kelly “slinked away into obscurity,” the president sneered. As for that elite inner circle, we assume it includes Jared and Ivanka, Kellyanne Conway and maybe a pecan pie.

In the week that followed, more and more former U.S. military and leaders in defense circles added their criticism. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, was equally appalled by Trump’s threat to call in active duty troops. “The idea that the military would be called in to dominate and to suppress what, for the most part, were peaceful protests – admittedly, where some had opportunistically turned them violent – and that the military would somehow come in and calm that situation,” he said, “was very dangerous to me.”

A second former chair of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, expressed similar fears. He cautioned that the country was at an “inflection point.” He said it was “impossible to remain silent.” The president’s decision to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park was “sickening.”

He added:

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit [his stunt stroll to St. John’s Episcopal Church], he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.

Admiral Mullin had confidence in current leaders of the U.S. military to obey lawful orders. He was “less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief.”

A third former chair of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, registered equal disgust. He described his reaction as he watched what happened in Lafayette Park:

The first thing was just absolute sadness that people aren’t allowed to protest and that, as I understand it, that was a peaceful protest that was disturbed by force, and that’s not right. That should not happen in America. And so I was sad. I mean, we should all shed tears over that, that particular act. ...I’m glad I don’t have to advise this President. I’m sure the senior military leadership is finding it really difficult these days to provide good, sound military advice.

“At the White House, there is no one home.”

IF YOU ARE a member of the Trump cult, perhaps you found comfort in believing this was all “Fake News.”

It wasn’t. It was the free press doing the primary job of the free press, gathering and disseminating information. Ret. Major General Paul D. Eaton called the decision of Gen. Milley to join Trump on his stroll “an egregious display of bad judgment, at best.” A veteran of the Iraq war, Eaton added, “At worst, Milley appears confused about the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution – not a president. I suggest the general get quickly unconfused, or resign.”

Former Marine four-star Gen. John Allen offered up biting criticism in an interview and in an essay in Foreign Policy magazine. On CNN, he described Trump as “assaulting” the First Amendment rights of peaceful demonstrators. “I’ve fought in overseas wars,” he told Jake Tapper, “and I never believed that the Constitution was under threat until recently.”

That threat was Trump. All Americans, Gen. Allen told Tapper, should be concerned about “the rule of law.”

“The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” Gen. Allen wrote. “Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”

The president of the United States stood in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, railed against weak governors and mayors who were not doing enough, in his mind, to control the unrest and the rioters in their cities, and threatened to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens.

Even more horrifying, “Trump was clear he views those engaged in the unrest and criminal acts in these riots as terrorists, an enemy.”

He continued:

There is no precedent in modern U.S. history for a president to wield federal troops in a state or municipality over the objections of the respective governor. Right now, the last thing the country needs – and, frankly, the U.S. military needs – is the appearance of U.S. soldiers carrying out the president’s intent by descending on American citizens.

The assault on “peaceful demonstrators,” with police, “manhandling and beating many of them, employing flash-bangs, riot-control agents, and pepper spray throughout,” was unacceptable.

Trump had “failed to show sympathy, empathy, compassion, or understanding – some of the traits the nation now needs from its highest office.”

Allen called the events of June 1 “awful for the United States and its democracy.” Then he posed the question, “What is to be done?”

At nearly the same moment that Americans were being beaten near the White House on behalf of their president, George Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd visited the site of George’s murder. Overcome with grief and anger, he loudly upbraided the crowd for tarnishing his brother’s memory with violence and looting. And then he told Americans what to do: vote. “Educate yourselves,” he said, “there’s a lot of us.” So, while June 1 could easily be confused with a day of shame and peril if we listen to Donald Trump, if instead we listen to Terrence Floyd, it is a day of hope. So mark your calendars – this could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment. But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home.

Again, this was not “Fake News.” Ret. Admiral James Stavridis sounded similar alarm in Time magazine:

[It] hurt to watch U.S. military personnel used against peaceful protestors in Washington D.C. early this week. The sweeping use of a combined civil-military force – D.C. police, Park Police, National Guard, and active duty military police – against the protesters to clear the way for a Presidential photo-op was beyond the pale of American norms.

The U.S. military, he noted, had 1.2 million members on active duty, all sworn to “protect and defend the constitution of the United States.” The “vast majority” would “lay down their lives to do so. But they are not meant to be turned against their fellow citizens.”

Stavridis called on “senior active duty military leaders” to stand up to Trump, even “at the risk of their career[s].”

If they failed, he cautioned, “I fear for the soul of our military and all of the attendant consequences. We cannot afford to have a future Lafayette Square end up looking like Tiananmen Square.”

A brave man stopped a line of tanks,
days before Chinese authorities decided to crush the protest.

“That shows you the power of strength.”

IT WAS THEN, while putting this post together, that this blogger stumbled upon what was said to be a Trump quote from March 1990. It was reported to have come from a Playboy interview.

I’m not a fan of this president. Still, I had a hard time believing even someone so callous could have said what Trump purportedly said. This was nine months after Chinese troops slaughtered thousands of pro-democracy protesters, mostly young students, and their supporters.

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump was quoted as saying. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”

I had to go to the source to be sure. It required wading through half of a lengthy article to find that quote. Finally: there it was, with an additional clause. It came in the middle of a series of questions about the need of leaders to take a forceful hand. Trump expressed disdain for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was trying to create a more democratic society and break the power of the Communist Party in Russia. Trump’s problem with Gorbachev? “Not a firm enough hand,” he said.

“You mean firm hand as in China?” the interviewer wondered.

Here we saw hints of the authoritarian president many of us have rightly come to distrust. “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Citizen Trump did say. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world…”

Better then, in Trump’s mind, to spill the blood of thousands of protesters than to appear weak.

Not once did the future president evince interest in human rights during his Playboy interview, the same absence we have noted since he took office.

For example: Trump claiming Vladimir Putin “isn’t such a killer” and adding that the U.S. “isn’t so innocent” either.

And Trump congratulating Xi Jinping for becoming “president for life.” Because who cares about elections.

And Trump saying that he fell “in love” with Kim Jong-un, the proprietor of the worst gulag on earth.

And Trump calling Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a friend,” despite the fact the Prince had just ordered a journalist cut up in pieces.

Finally, Trump, at the G7 summit in 2019, jokingly calling President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a man infamous for ordering the massacre of more than 800 protesters in 2013, his “favorite dictator.”

Trump being Trump.

“It has to be moral, legal and ethical.”

IF YOU DON’T PAY close attention, you may not realize that active duty U.S. military are reluctant to criticize civilian leadership. We, in this country, have traditionally cherished civilian control of the troops. We don’t want the military arresting elected officials, as in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. We don’t want “death squads” roaming the streets, as in Argentina in the 80s, when generals ruled. We don’t want journalists being assassinated, as in Russia or Saudi Arabia in 2020.

Yet, on June 6, Ret. Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire told The New York Times, “Jim Mattis, Mike Mullen and Marty Dempsey are all good friends, and I respect them tremendously. I am in alignment with their views.”

So, too, we had Ret. Army Gen. Tony Thomas questioning the use of the word “battlespace” by the Secretary of Defense, to describe scenes of protest in scores of U.S. cities. “Not what American needs to hear...ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure...ie [sic] a Civil War...”

Even Defense Secretary Esper realized that he had made a mistake in using the word. He apologized and rolled it back. He made it clear, in opposition to what the president had been saying, that we had not reached a point where active duty military personnel were needed to quell protests.

This angered the thin-skinned president. When Press Secretary McEnany was asked whether Trump still had confidence in Esper, she refused to say. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the president had to be talked out of firing him. Esper had to be talked out of resigning, himself.

The free press continued to give voice to the concerns of top military and defense leaders. “There is a thin line between the military’s tolerance for questionable partisan moves over the past three years and the point where these become intolerable for an apolitical military,” retired three-star Army general Douglas E. Lute told The New York Times. Lute, who worked under both Bush 43 and Obama, was clear. “Relatively minor episodes have accumulated imperceptibly, but we are now at a point of where real damage is being done.”

The Military Times chose to highlight the comments of Ret. Adm. William McRaven. “Trust me, every man and woman in uniform recognizes that we are all Americans and that the last thing they want to do as military men and women is to stand in the way of a peaceful protest.”

“When you are in the military, there are three criteria for every decision we make: it has to be moral, legal and ethical,” McRaven continued. “Ethical, you have to follow the rules, legal you have to follow the law, and then moral you have to follow what you know to be right. And either way, that’s just not right.”

As a serious blogger, I was suddenly curious. If I did a word search of Trump’s nearly 50,000 tweets, how many times would he use the word “ethical” in a way that showed ethics guided his conduct.

As expected, it turned out to be none.

IT WASN’T “Enemies of the People” at work when the media continued gathering voices of protest. It was the free press, holding the powerful to account. “We have a military to fight our enemies, not our own people,” Admiral Mullen said on Fox News Sunday last week.

Mullen also noted that 43 percent of active duty soldiers, sailors, Marines, and air crews were men and women of color.

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“We have a Constitution. We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.”

Former Sec. of State Colin Powell

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Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell also made headlines, telling CNN that the president’s actions were “dangerous for our democracy” and “dangerous for our country.”

“We have a Constitution,” Gen. Powell continued. “We have to follow that Constitution. And the president’s drifted away from it.”

On ABC, Gen. Dempsey called the president’s rhetoric “inflammatory.”

On NBC, Admiral Stavridis said Trump’s threat to use the military “rang echoes” of 1776, when George III sent troops to Boston to crush unrest.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published a letter signed by 89 former admirals, generals and defense leaders. Like so many others, they expressed growing concern as they watched the president unravel.

They noted that while,

several past presidents have called on our armed services to provide additional aid to law enforcement in times of national crisis – among them Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson – these presidents used the military to protect the rights of Americans, not to violate them.

All those who serve in the military and government take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, they warned, “We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic.”

EVENTUALLY, another group of military men and women joined in warning against the use of U.S. troops to suppress dissent. At last check, more than 1,000 members of a group called “Concerned Members of the Long Gray Line,” representing every West Point class from 1966 to 2019, had signed an open letter to the Class of 2020.

(The responses from dozens of other former grads and military men and women are also worth the time to read.)

Their letter read, in part:

[Your class, like others before you, represents] the country’s diversity of race, ethnicity, identity and beliefs. Your West Point journey has led you to this moment when, with right hands raised, you take an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This oath has no expiration date.

…The oath taken by those who choose to serve in America’s military is aspirational. We pledge service to no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant. Your oath is to a set of principles and an ideal expressed in the Constitution and its amendments. Our Constitution establishes freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion, of equal protection under the law regardless of race, color, or creed – we cannot take for granted these freedoms that are but dreams in too many nations around the world.

…The abhorrent murder of George Floyd has inspired millions to protest police brutality and the persistence of racism. Sadly, the government has threatened to use the Army in which you serve as a weapon against fellow Americans engaging in these legitimate protests….

On the eve of your graduation and joining the Long Gray Line and the Army officer corps, we, the undersigned…pledge to stand for the sacred democratic principle that all are treated equally, and each person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….

…As your lifetime journey of service begins, we pray that your class motto, “With Vision We Lead,” will prove prophetic. America needs your leadership.

“Trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

IN OTHER WORDS, if you have concluded that the President of the United States is a menace, you are not alone.

You are not someone who hates America, hates the flag, or disrespects veterans. You are right. Trump is a threat.

So, on Flag Day 2020, remember the words of I.F. Stone, who once wrote, “The fight for liberty is not waged on the battlefields alone, nor does it consist only in war against a foreign foe. It is also a war against ignorance and prejudice and troublemakers in high office.”

Remember, too, the words of President John Adams. “There is danger from all men,” he once wrote. “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

Trump likes to hide behind the flag.

He does not own it, nor are his supporters more patriotic than his foes.

POSTSCRIPT: On the same day that the letter quoted above was released, Gen. Milley apologized for accompanying Trump on his stunt hike.

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” he said. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

The “senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd” was an outrage, he added. He supported the demonstrators:

His death amplified the pain, the frustration, and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in, day out.

The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African Americans…[and] we should all be proud that the vast majority of protests have been peaceful.

Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, a military analyst for CNN, added another voice of warning to discussion. “Gen. Milley’s comments about the need to keep the military out of politics were timely and – all too sadly these days – appropriate to the pressures under which our troops labor.”

BLOGGER’S NOTE: The president later insisted that Gen. Milley and Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper should have been “proud” to be there. “I think they should be proud to walk alongside of their president for purposes of safety,” he grumbled.

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat in the 2020 election, Milley’s concerns only grew. There was wild talk, in the president’s circle, of using the military to take over the counting of the votes – at least in states Trump lost. Milley and the Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to defeat any takeover by resigning in order of rank if Trump insisted the military interfere. Gen. Mark Milley, as chairman, would refuse to carry out such orders and resign. Then the other members would resign in protest, by order of rank.

Or as Gen. Milley reportedly put it bluntly during one conversation with top officers, referring to Trump and his minions and any plan for a coup. “They may try, but they’re not going to f****** succeed,” he said. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”

In the face of Trump’s litany of stolen election claims, Milley warned other top military leaders, “This is a Reichstag moment,” In the days leading up to the attack on Capitol Hill, he believed the president was preaching, “the gospel of the Führer.”

And, in the end, you could add former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to the list of people who worked with Trump, and came away horrified by what they had seen. In the spring of 2022, he calls Trump “a threat to democracy.”