Meanwhile, it's pretty touchy right now between the Pentagon and the White House; the question is, will Trump fire General Milley? Then what? And, will he attempt to move the Confederate statues to the Rose Garden?
~~~~~
The Generals Are Turning on Trump
Mark Milley’s apology for the church photo-op is a major escalation.
President Donald Trump’s fraught relations with senior military officers ratcheted up another notch on Thursday as Gen. Mark Milley, the top U.S. general, formally apologized for appearing in Trump’s June 1 photo-op
at St. John’s Episcopal Church after police and National Guard officers
fired rubber bullets and tear gas to clear protesters from nearby
Lafayette Square, across from the White House.
“I should not have been there,” Milley, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said in a prerecorded commencement address to National
Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment
created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Last week, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper,
who also appeared in the photo-op, told reporters that he too shouldn’t
have been there, further claiming that he didn’t know where he was
going when Trump led him to the church. Esper also said that he opposed
invoking the Insurrection Act to bring active-duty soldiers to quell
disorder in D.C., as Trump had threatened to do. Esper’s remarks earned
him a chewing-out in the Oval Office. Whether the same will happen to
Milley—who has reportedly been agonizing over his role in Trump’s
politicization of the military—is a matter of some suspense.
In between the June 1 incident and now, several senior officers,
retired and still serving, have spoken out against the idea of using
active-duty troops against the American citizens who have been
demonstrating since the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
Retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis,
who had resigned in protest as secretary of defense in December 2018,
used the occasion to criticize Trump himself, lambasting his presidency
as “three years without mature leadership.”
Trump is scheduled to give a commencement address this Saturday to the graduating cadets at West Point.
Rather than delivering it remotely, as various leaders have done for
other military academies, Trump—against the wishes of West Point’s
leaders—demanded that the Army cadets return to campus, isolate
themselves for two weeks, and then, during the ceremony itself, sit in
tight formation, ignoring CDC guidelines on social distancing. Of the
1,100 graduating cadets, 17 have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The whole business, which seems designed to provide footage of Trump
speaking before the newest flock of military officers for his reelection
campaign, has sparked quiet resentment from many in the Army.
Meanwhile, in another brewing conflict between Trump and a military
culture that’s suddenly, swiftly modernizing, the Republican-chaired Senate Armed Services Committee
late Wednesday approved a motion giving the Defense Department three
years to change the names of all military bases, installations, and
street signs named after Confederate officers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren
offered the amendment to the defense authorization bill; the motion was
approved in a voice vote, signaling that it will almost certainly be
adopted by the full Senate.
Then, on Thursday, Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York,
introduced a bill giving the Defense Department just one year to change
the names. She sponsored a similar bill in 2017 that garnered so little
support it didn’t even come up for a vote on the House floor.
The world has since changed. Just in recent days, several prominent Army officers—notably
retired Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan—have said it’s time to remove the names of the
treasonous secessionists who fought against the United States
in the Civil War from U.S. military facilities, including 10 large Army
bases in former Confederate Southern states. In response, acting Army
Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that he would be open to a “bipartisan
conversation” on the matter.
But Trump reacted with fury to the whole idea, tweeting
on Wednesday that he “will not even consider the renaming of these
Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.” He finished off his
tweet, laden with more capitalized letters than usual: “Respect our
Military!”—although he clearly has no notion of what real military
officers, who have deployed for real combat from these bases, really
think.
All of this is taking place as Trump’s ratings have slid by as much as 10 percentage points
just in the past week, owing in part to his hostile and aggressive
response to the protests and to his political exploitation of church
property, a move that has damaged his standing with many evangelicals. Now, he’s picking a high-profile fight with the military as well.
The awkward thing about Milley is that Trump appointed him Joint
Chiefs of Staff chairman in 2019. The post has a term of four years, so
he is nowhere near retiring—though, in accordance with his powers as
commander in chief, Trump could fire him. In a recent article in the
Atlantic, Eliot Cohen,
dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International
Studies, wrote about the Trump era’s growing crisis in civil-military
relations, concluding, “The real demonstration of military courage by a
general in such a position is … the willingness to be fired.” Milley may
soon face that test."
~~~~~
Regarding the West Point graduation:
Group of West Point Graduates Warn That Alumni in Trump Administration 'Betray Public Faith'
by, Nicole Gaouette
~~~~~
Regarding the West Point graduation:
Group of West Point Graduates Warn That Alumni in Trump Administration 'Betray Public Faith'
by, Nicole Gaouette
~~~~~
~ More From Stephen Collinson:
Trump defiant as cultural change sweeps America
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 12:24 AM ET, Fri June 12, 2020
The deeper the change sweeping America, the more President Donald Trump digs into positions that even some of his natural allies have recently forsaken.
Defending the memory of Confederate generals, proudly crisscrossing the country without wearing a mask and threatening to send troops to tackle demonstrators in Seattle, Trump on Thursday solidified his reelection pitch as a bulwark against a cultural transformation.
In
essence, he's arguing that there is something fundamentally un-American
and liberal about finally shedding the symbols and imagery of the Civil
War, believing systemic racism stains the police force or covering up
to prevent the spread of a deadly virus he is trying to wish away.
The
President's conduct is consistent with a lifetime of going against the
crowd and his impulse to use racial and cultural flashpoints for his own
advantage. At a time when much of the country, even many instinctively
conservative individuals and institutions, is engaging in a racial
reckoning, he is apparently betting that his stands will ignite and
expand his political base and carry him to a backlash victory in
November.
As
he did with his "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan, Trump is
implicitly invoking an idealized past vision of a nation untarnished by
political correctness, where white conservative values were dominant,
that seems incompatible with an increasingly diverse country. At the
same time, he is propagating an alternative reality that the pandemic is
over -- despite rising cases in many states -- to convince voters that
the strong economy he was using as his main reelection pitch is on the
way back.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced on Thursday that Trump will accept the nomination at a 15,000-person arena in Jacksonville, Florida
-- not in Charlotte, North Carolina, as planned -- after the President
took issue with social distancing guidelines from the Tar Heel State's
Democratic governor that would have curtailed the festivities he wanted.
The
President's resumption of campaign rallies -- he will be back onstage
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next week -- is crucial to driving home this
two-pronged strategy. But reality is intruding; attendees will have to agree to a disclaimer
that stipulates they won't sue Trump's campaign if they get coronavirus
in a packed crowd. In itself, the event will be a massive symbolic
repudiation of the idea that there is any reason for Americans to change
their behaviors and attitudes in the face of two massive national
crises.
But as the President
fortifies his culture war positions, he is alienating his own generals,
some Republican senators, executives who run sports leagues and
Americans who tell pollsters that they are uneasy with his handling of
the pandemic and the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.
Military
leaders were shocked by Trump's refusal to rename bases named for
Confederate generals, who took up arms against the United States in a
civil war fought to preserve slavery. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, now says
he was wrong to allow himself to be dragged into Trump's notorious
photo op following the forceful dispersal of peaceful protesters outside
the White House last week.
NASCAR, the stock car racing circuit that is seen as a bastion of Southern values, has banned the
Confederate flag from its tracks in the latest stunning move to address
a national outpouring triggered by Floyd's death. The NFL has apologized to its own black players -- whom Trump blasted for taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest police brutality.
Even some Republican senators, on whose support Trump can normally depend without even asking, broke with the President in
the controversy over Confederate symbols. Some local politicians in
several Southern, conservative bastions are moving on the issue of
Confederate monuments. And unlike Trump, most Republican senators walk
around Capitol Hill wearing masks to help cut transmission of the novel
coronavirus -- obeying government advice from the experts the President
has made a political choice to undercut.
Trump
is also insisting that there is no systemic racism in the police -- as
he stakes out a "law and order" platform that he believes is attractive
to a wider group than just his political base. He said during a trip to
Texas on Thursday that National Guard troops cut through protesters in
Washington "like a knife through butter" and renewed his vow to
"dominate" the streets.
The
President, with an eye on his grassroots base, also appeared to argue
that the problem of racism and discrimination faced by people of color was about equal to that posed by people who call it out.
"We
have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they
appear, but will make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling
tens of millions of decent Americans as racist or bigots," Trump said.
Trump seeks to ignite a political backlash
Trump's
instincts are that the "forgotten Americans" who make up his base, and
plenty more besides, are angry at and alienated by the current pace of
change and the restrictions that have been imposed by governments on
their activities during the pandemic. He is deliberately pitting white,
conservative older Americans who subscribe to what they might call
"traditional values" against the more diverse, more liberal younger
sector of the country, which he shocked to the core by beating Hillary
Clinton in the 2016 election.
It's
not the first time the President has come out in favor of preserving
Confederate imagery -- he did so after the controversy over his racially
charged comments on the Charlottesville protests several years ago,
speaking up for supporters in the South who believe that such monuments
are quintessential icons of Southern heritage.
But
three years on, Trump appears to be outpaced by the change erupting all
around him, and the stakes of his strategy are becoming increasingly
high. As polls show that he's badly trailing Democratic candidate Joe
Biden ahead of November's election, the chances appear to be growing
that the President is navigating toward political terrain that cannot
provide a foundation for his reelection. His decision to purely serve
his base in more than three years in power is facing its most acute test
-- it's possible his failure to broaden his support will make a second
term impossible.
But the President
is sticking to his task, in the apparent belief that his rhetoric is
seen very differently outside the elite bubbles on the East Coast. And
he's zeroing in on Democratic vulnerabilities, for instance calls for
defunding the police, which he is using to portray Democrats as radicals
out of the American mainstream.
Trump puts Republican senators in a tough spot
All
day on Thursday, the President's actions reflected a politician who is
convinced he's tapped into the pulse of the nation, which he says media
elites have ignored, even though current polling suggests he may have
made a losing bet and is actually narrowing his support.
"My
administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent
and Fabled Military Installations," Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday,
characteristically igniting a culture war skirmish that raged all day.
The President's argument that shedding the names of Civil War generals
would be disrespectful to troops who trained at such bases and then went
off to fight and die in foreign wars makes little logical sense.
But
it allows him to pose as the guardian of Southern, conservative values,
waging political feuds with establishment elite institutions and
opinion formers -- a dynamic that he always seeks to create and that has
been successful for him in the past.
The
President's latest uproar is an unwelcome one for many Republican
senators -- especially those who are already facing tough reelection
fights and fear being dragged down by an increasingly unpopular
President, who dropped to a 38% approval rating in a CNN poll this week.
A Republican-led Senate committee voted against Trump's wishes
on Thursday to support an amendment written by Democratic Sen.
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to remove Confederate leaders' names
from military bases -- drawing a threat of a White House veto.
"There
is always a history that we don't want to forget," said Sen. Mike
Rounds, a South Dakota Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Services
Committee and supports the plan. "With regard to that, I agree with the
President that we don't want to forget our history. ... But at the same
time that doesn't mean that we should continue with those bases with the
names of individuals who fought against our country."
The
next few months -- in light of the extraordinary reckoning many white
Americans are having about race, perhaps for the first time -- will show
whether Trump's strategies will be as successful as they were four
years ago. And that leads to one more question, a moral one, over
whether a President -- the titular head of the nation -- should work to
reconcile national aspirations of equality rather than standing in the
way for his own political reasons."
~~~~~
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