By David W. Marshall
(Trice Edney Wire) – While hundreds of top military generals and admirals were summoned to Quantico, Virginia for a rare and unusual summit, President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn’t receive the type of MAGA response they were expecting. Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told military brass in his opening comments that the event was an “unprecedented opportunity and honor”. In keeping with the military’s nonpartisan tradition, the assembled military leaders were mostly silent as they sat through the highly partisan addresses from Trump and Hegseth.
For anyone who cares for this nation, it was difficult to listen while Trump and Hegseth detailed their authoritarian misuse of America’s armed forces. “It was disgraceful to subject military leaders to so flagrantly partisan political theater and dangerous for the commander in chief to encourage them to violence against fellow Americans,” said Kori Schake, a senor fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. Since the start of Trump’s second term in office, he and Hegseth have fired numerous generals and admirals, often without cause. Four-star General Charles Q. Brown was among them.
We constantly hear the administration’s anti-DEI disinformation as the Pentagon’s purge of dedicated top level military officials continues. In the case of Gen. Brown, he was replaced with a person with less experience, but is willing to the bidding of the MAGA administration. General Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff was the highest military officer in the nation when he was fired. He was the second Black person to hold the position as Chairman as he followed in the footsteps of Gen. Colin Powell. He was also the first Black American to lead a branch of the United States Armed Forces (Air Force). After 41 years, General Brown completed a long and highly decorated career when he was fired. It is not surprising that Trump’s underqualified replacement has far less senior level military experience than Gen. Brown while requiring a special presidential waiver to fill the position due to the lack of customary qualifications. Those who are the most experienced and dedicated mostly likely are not going to commit to a destructive and reckless MAGA agenda.
Earlier in the year during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Hegseth sought to down play the Pentagon purge by stating, “This is a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take.” During the summit, Hegseth said “more leadership changes will be made, of that I am certain.” As he lectured men and women who have decades more military experience than his National Guard resume, he continued by giving the names of three retired officers as the kind of officers he wants out. We saw the purge of experienced, dedicated civil servants throughout the various agencies of the federal government, now it is occurring at the Pentagon. People are sounding the alarm, but are the warnings being taken seriously given the risk to national security?
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who served under Trump during his first term spoke out against the military’s leadership changes, calling the dismissal of military leaders “reckless” and urged Congress to intervene. In February of this year, Mattis joined five other former defense secretaries in a letter to Congress demanding immediate hearings to assess the national security implications of President Trump’s firing of senior military leaders.
Trump and Hegseth are correct in their assessment of General Brown and many others like him because they are committed to their sworn oath, and would likely not be the type of officers who would blindly agree on the idea of using American cities as military “training grounds”. The system of checks and balances within the Pentagon is slowly being replaced with those who would gladly politicize the military. Unfortunately, it is too late for the Supreme Court.
Today, we have a Supreme Court who has given up its status as a co-equal branch of government, by becoming a MAGA court. Chief Justice John Roberts has led the court for 20 years and has transformed the court into a destructive judicial body that is determined to reverse the progress made from the Warren court from the 1950s and 1960s regarding individual rights and racial equality. Voting rights protections are being rolled back. The court ended affirmative action in higher education, it made it harder to safeguard our health and environment, gun rights are expanded. Labor unions are weakened, and a corrupt president now has general immunity from criminal prosecution.
Trump learned a lot from his first term in office when he was unable to have his way when people such as the former Vice President Mike Pence and Jim Mattis decided to put the interests of the country first. What Pence was unwilling to do as vice president, J.D. Vance has no problem. Approximately 800 generals and admirals showed America what it looks like to be a true patriot. Let’s pray they will stand strong even if it means disobeying an order when that order is totally illegal.
David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.
