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?
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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."
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Regarding the West Point graduation:
Group of West Point Graduates Warn That Alumni in Trump Administration 'Betray Public Faith'
by, Nicole Gaouette
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Regarding the West Point graduation:
Group of West Point Graduates Warn That Alumni in Trump Administration 'Betray Public Faith'
by, Nicole Gaouette
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~ 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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Here are more noticias:
