Donald Trump has now fired seven senior military officers, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; the Chief of Naval Operations; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; the vice chief of the Air Force; and three judge advocate generals (Navy, Army, and Air Force). All were apparently fired for being a little too DEI. Take a look:
They do look a little too diverse for Trump's taste, don't they?
This is a great post but I think there are two things going on here.
(1) high-ranking officers who are not white men? Fired. (Top row.)
(2) JAG lawyers, even if they are white men, need to be replaced by the most hackish lawyers Trump can find who will NOT tell him, when he tries to issue an illegal or unconstitutional order, that it's illegal or unconstitutional. (Bottom row.)
So, two stories. Otherwise agree completely.
2. is more concerning. He's conducting his administration like he runs his corrupt businesses. Which is a scarey thing because he has all powers of the presidency at his command and a SCOTUS ruling granting him near king like status.
2) is exactly the point. 'DEI' firings are a two-fer cover for turning the military into effectively Trump's private military force. This is not hyperbole; it's crystal clear what TrumpCo is doing, and given their moves on Ukraine, Russia, and Europe it's inescapable. Here's Josh Marshall at TPM:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/ominous-3
This is really, really bad. We are in deep shit. Noone's going to 'save' us. The Democrats and our national media are impotent and functionally complicit. Erasing DEI is politically expedient and meaningless cover for ratcheting in authoritarianism. By itself it means nothing, other than the classic targeting of "out" as a means to cementing absolute power. Everything else is distraction.
+1
There are probably multiple stories here.
The Commandant of the Coast Guard, despite her gender, may have been enabling a cover-up of sexual misconduct at the Coast Guard Academy. Her actions and behavior earned bipartisan enmity and she may have been toast in any new administration.
The "drunk" has expressed extreme dislike for JAG officers as interfering in military operations - once Joni Ernst enabled his confirmation their firing was inevitable.
The "orange golfer" has wanted the highly politicized Caine for some time, so the Chairman was likely toast regardless of background.
The CNO firing is probably the clearest example of "white guy" preference at work. The Navy can be very hidebound and I have listened to many a rant in old guy veteran circles about the CNO.
Not sure about the story with the AF Vice. The vice chiefs tend to do internal institutional tasks and maybe he was too far forward on diversity issues in the USAF or maybe he just told the "drunk" no and that landed him in the doghouse. Could also be that the AF vice crossed swords with Caine (a former USAF 3 star) and while he came out ahead in the past, now he was forced out.
On the whole, more performative BS.
When I was in, I never wore every ribbon, just the top three. Unless directed of course. The funny thing is though the ones I was most proud of were ranked so low that to show them off I'd have to wear them all.
Also, Trump is directly making us less ready by installing favorites and lickspittles.
Yeah, and that's never, ever happened before, has it.
Not since about, oh, 9 years ago.
OT, but a terrible example of trump's tactics, a
report of threatening to deny Starlink service to Ukraine if Zelenskyy doesn't agree to give up a large share of the country's mineral wealth
not the first items -
https://balloon-juice.com
I'm sure the appointment of a retired three-star general over the heads of 48 serving four-star officers to chair the Joint Chiefs will do wonders for the morale of the military. Did Trump really have to go to such lengths to find a zealous MAGA general who'll be "loyal" when given unlawful orders?
What other choice did he have, Mike Flynn was otherwise engaged
Why not Elon Musk?
He could enlist, and become an officer under Trumps commissioning which would then get rubber stamped by the senate
Then he gets promoted to 4 star and become Chairman Joint Chiefs !!!
Although Trump probably wants the head military job himself. He's redesigning the Uniform as we speak with loads of gold braid and gaudy epaulets!
On second thought
My
Army
Got
Annihilated
Probably wouldn't sit too well with the MAGA crowd.......
If you intend to give illegal orders to the military, these are the posts you need to control. If there is to be a military backed coup, cancellation of the mid-terms, invocation of the Insurrection Act or a third or lifetime Trump Presidency this is where you would start laying the groundwork.
This is very ominous.
+1
The doo doo sinks to the bottom of the pit.
Not for a "coup." That's already happened. It's to have the ultimate threat for any situation - domestic or international - where actors resist your will.
To squash any Dem protests in the (highly unlikely) event they win and the courts back them
Just backup contingency of course, the primary being no GOP VP will ever certify a Dem electoral victory
Belt & Suspenders √
"the primary being no GOP ..."
Not really.
The primary is harassing "as much as needed" any serious democractic candidate away, which may include killing some of them. That is the way dictators take control in democracies (e.g. Putin).
Or to prevent the possibility of a coup engineered by the military to overthrow Trump/Musk to "save the country."
I assume this is step one. The Service Secretaries appoint the promotion boards. It will take a couple or so years to salt the ranks.
Never before has there been such a profoundly stupid asshole in charge of the nation, dedicated to advancing their culture war, such that they've been consumed by petty stunts and acts of revenge in lieu of doing their actual job. Having replaced competent people with unqualified and incompetent ones, then delegating his own duties to them, he has set the stage for his own demise. Sooner than later, multiple consequential chains of events will culminate in a spectacular collision, triggering a public meltdown that marks the beginning of the end of his administration.
Either that or I'm really good at fanfic and I've just given away the plot for a future book/movie.
The movie scripts are literally writing themselves these days.
kenalovell and alzeroscaptain,
TIL from Wikipedia that “the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not have operational command authority, either individually or collectively, as the chain of command goes from the president to the secretary of defense, and from the secretary to the regional combatant commanders.” Instead, their responsibility is policy, planning, training and readiness, ensuring that the regional commands have the resources to carry out their missions; also, advising the President.
Should TFM invoke the Insurrection Act, the orders would go to Northern Command.
It's not a question of operational authority, but of agreeing to the deployment of the military for unlawful purposes. Milley, for example, had no hesitation in opposing orders he believed were even unwise, let alone unlawful. Trump is moving to make sure that doesn't happen again. If he orders the Joint Chiefs to prepare to occupy Greenland, he doesn't want them telling him sorry, no can do.
And it would be a very brave brigadier or major general who refused to obey an order from the Chair of the Joint Chiefs on the grounds he wasn't authorised to give it.
How many people think this is Trump acting as a puppet of Musk or other billionaires?
He's a puppet. If his puppeteers think it's in their best interests they'll let him do it. If not, he's easily manipulated into not doing it. Someone is making suggestions for replacements. It's sure as hell not his dumb ass.
"He's a puppet."
By now that look like a religious belief.
The facts clearly contardict it. He is consitent in making sure that law-enforcement/security forces are under loyal Trumpists, while not caring much about anything else.
agree
maybe Josef meant he's Putin's puppet
He's being manipulated from every direction. If not a puppet, what would you call it? A tool? He has no agenda, beyond making money, that isn't someone elses agenda. So long as they don't interfere with that they will continue to be able to manipulate him to their hearts content because he just doesn't care about anything else.
" He has no agenda, beyond making money,.."
That is just dumb.
He wants to be a dictator. That is what drives him currently.
"He's being manipulated from every direction. "
To support this assertion you have to show somebody getting him to take action that makes it more difficult for him to become a dictator.
He is distracted by scamming oppurtunities and his adolation of other dictators, but not really enough to put him off the path to dictatorship.
Putin's puppet still works. I might go with the another word starting with "pu...", though that would wholly inappropriate.
So you agree that it doesn't look like he is a puppet of Musk and other billionaires?
He doesn't care--as long as money keeps rolling in and people keep genuflecting.
The question is who does Trump genuflect too?
By actions, billionaires get their way for the most part. Or should I say oligarchs.
+1
I think it's more complex than that. There are certain people who are more or less Wormtongues for Trump, most notably Musk and to some extent Putin. However, Trump also acts like an impulsive toddler, and he makes decisions that are ultimately probably bad for the billionaires' bottom lines, but satisfy his own immature whims.
This reminds me of when Stalin purged the Soviet army in the late 30s removing most senior officers replacing them with ”political correct” ones . As a result did the Red Army lack competent leadership when Hitler attacked and that was one of the main reasons Soviet losses was disastrous.
No surprise Operation Barbarossas for 2.0. Yes “military” leadership will be sorely lacking, but remember he excels in Neville Chamberlain Negotiations.
China gets Taiwan and the S China Sea. We get exclusive safe passage for our ships, any chips China steals, AND a Trump hotel in Beijing.
Putin gets Ukraine. We get cheaper energy AND a Trump hotel in Moscow
See, once you get comfortable with throwing allies under the bus, averting conflicts is a cinch. Just ask the Kurds
. . . he excels in Neville Chamberlain Negotiations.
No, he doesn't. The common understanding about what happened at Munich is wrong. Chamberlain signed a bad deal, but it was for a rational reason and a military intelligence failure.
He wasn't naive. He knew perfectly well that Hitler wouldn't stop with the Sudetenland. He was playing for time. Britain and France were in the middle of a massive rearmament program, while the Germans had badly overheated their economy and not advancing much. The longer the war could be delayed, the better the Allied position would be.
There were two, mutually reinforcing intelligence failures. The Anglo-French overestimated the strength of the Wehrmacht, and the Abwehr underestimated the strength of the Allies. Consequently, Chamberlain and Daladier (people tend to forget that the agreement was as much on him as Chamberlain) were more cautious than they needed to be, and Hitler was too aggressive.
It was a bad deal, because what the Allies gained over the next 12 months was outweighed by the loss of the Czechoslovak army and their border fortifications, which were why the Sudetenland had been given to Czechoslovakia in the first place. Unfortunately, the British and French put no value on the Czechoslovaks.
None of that were things that Chamberlain could say in public. He had to pretend that he believed Hitler, and so that understanding calcified.
Trump is wholly incapable of the sorts of policy decisions Chamberlain engaged in. Not even enough to be wrong.
That squares with an assessment I read on a British site. Basically no one was really ready for war - including the Germans. Chamberlain made a cold calculation that he could buy time at the expense of the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia and he used that time to build up British forces and alliances.
And, as TMD notes, Chamberlain had to keep quiet.
The JAGs rule on whether a Trump order is legal. He's planning martial law.
When are they going to get around to firing Clarence Thomas for being not a qualified justice?
Why? He is one of the "good ones" you know (a credit to his race), and he votes as commanded. He is totally corrupt and a sexual predator, so that is big plus for the MAGA world.
Clarence Thomas was the first DEI hire
Shhhhhhhhhhh.................
Perhaps they will promote General "Buck" Turgidson or Jack Ripper to replace Brown, but I don't believe they are incompetent or spineless enough to work for Mango Mussolini. And I don't know if they are alcoholics or sexual predators, which give them a leg up. Ripper is quite delusional, which is a plus, and they are the right color of course and don't have "foreign" sounding names.
I'm sure Vlad will have some suggestions for his orange vassal.
Immediately with the demonization of "diversity" (etc), I concluded that this would eventually end up as "Only whte men of non-homosexual inclinations" may work under the Convict administration.
It's moving along faster than I expected. And even more publicly.
This is why Trump is President. Like it or not, this is why most of his voters supported him. A huge chunk of voters remember Jim Crow very fondly.