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It’s no secret that Donald Trump has repeatedly clashed with U.S. military leaders, but it appears that the Republican has a plan to address this if voters give him a second term: The former president apparently intends to kick many generals out of the armed forces.
In his latest Fox News interview, which aired on Sunday, Trump boasted that he got to know “real” generals, unlike the U.S. military leaders who “want there to be woke.” (He didn’t explain what that meant.)
“Are you going to fire those generals?” one of the co-hosts asked. “The woke generals at the top?”
The presumptive GOP nominee replied, “Yes, I would get rid of them. Yeah. But see, now I know them. I didn’t know them before. But, you know, I came in, what do I know? I was a New York real estate person. But no, I’d fire. I would fire them. You can’t have woke military.”
There’s considerable evidence of Trump denigrating those who serve in the military — disparaging wounded veterans, referring to soldiers missing in action as “losers,” blaming military leaders for failed missions he approved, and even downplaying the importance of troops with traumatic brain injuries — but in recent years, the former president has shown particular disdain for generals.
While in office, for example, the then-president reportedly lashed out at generals as “a bunch of dopes and babies,” while publicly going on the offensive against his own former Defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis — whom he accused of acting like a “Democrat” for questioning the White House’s less-defensible national security moves.
After leaving office, Trump went after retired Gen. Mark Milley — the man he tapped to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — falsely accusing the Army general of having committed a “treasonous act,” adding that “in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Suggesting he might yet target Milley again in the future, Trump added, “To be continued!!!”
Now, however, the Republican apparently has more expansive plans for a second term, planning to fire U.S. military leaders who fail to meet his ideological standards.
At first blush, this might not seem especially surprising, but let’s not forget that a bedrock principle of the American experience is that we have an apolitical armed forces, filled with servicemembers who are loyal, not to an elected leader, but the U.S. Constitution.
If Trump intends to politicize the military, filling the ranks with loyalists, it sets the stage for a dramatic and fundamental change in how the United States is supposed to operate.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.