{UAH} Power Up: 'My' generals go to war with President Trump

By Jacqueline Alemany

June 4

with Brent D. Griffiths

Good morning and welcome back. Protesters gathered for largely peaceful protests for a ninth night across the country; 105,000 people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus; and a memorial service will be held for George Floyd in Minneapolis today. Thanks for waking up with us. 

Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis listens during a March 2018 event at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

At the Pentagon

NOT 'MY' GENERAL: Candidate Trump once said he gets his military advice from "watching the shows." President Trump stocked his Cabinet with "my generals." Now, the president is on the receiving end of a battering ram of criticism from some of those same military heavyweights he once bragged about as he vows to "dominate" those protesting racial injustice — comparing the commander in chief to a wannabe dictator whose actions are endangering the country.

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Former defense secretary Jim Mattis dramatically broke his silence yesterday, delivering an extraordinary rebuke of Trump's response to the police killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed. 

In a missive first published by The Atlantic, Mattis excoriated Trump for ordering the U.S. military to "violate the constitutional rights" of citizens by militarizing a crackdown on protests and accused the country's chief executive of deliberately trying to divide the American people. 

Mattis contrasted the U.S. principal of unity with the Nazi ideology "Divide and Conquer," calling on Americans to "summon that unity to surmount this crisis." 

• "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us," Mattis wrote in a statement. 
• "We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children."

The retired Marine general's decision to break his "duty of silence," which he has said would be "inappropriate," comes at a pivotal time for Trump five months away from the election. And it may very well allow other prominent military brass, Republicans and senior national security officials to break with Trump's bellicose rhetoric as he seeks to paint himself as the law-and-order president.

• "Enough is enough," Mattis told ABC News's Martha Raddatz of his decision to speak out.
• "Mattis is still holding back, though. He's privately told friends that Trump's behavior is far worse than the reports & that the republic is on shaky footing. He knows so much more than he's currently divulging," New York Times's Robert Draper tweeted.
• Trump's response: "His primary strength was not military, but rather personal public relations. I gave him a new life, things to do, and battles to win, but he seldom 'brought home the bacon,'" the president tweeted. "I didn't like his 'leadership' style or much else about him, and many others agree. Glad he is gone!"

Not the only one: Mattis's statement comes on the heels of a withering op-ed by retired Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Obama and a public rebuke.  And it lands as the streets of the nation's capital have become increasingly militarized following the violent Monday night push of mainly peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square outside the White House to allow the Trump to walk across the street for a photo op with the Bible.

• "It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel — including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church," Mullen wrote in The Atlantic. "I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent."
• "The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment," Gen. John Allen, a retired four-star Marine general  who commanded U.S. forced in Afghanistan, wrote for Foreign Policy. "To even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy. The president's speech was calculated to project his abject and arbitrary power, but he failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment. And while Monday was truly horrific, no one should have been surprised."

He still has his job (for now): Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said yesterday he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act, which would send active-duty troops into American cities, and claimed he didn't know where he was headed when he marched with Trump to St. John's.

• "Senior Pentagon leaders are now so concerned about losing public support — and that of their active-duty and reserve personnel, 40 percent of whom are people of color — that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released a message to top military commanders on Wednesday affirming that every member of the armed forces swears an oath to defend the Constitution, which he said; gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly,'" the New York Times's Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Maggie Haberman report. 
• "In a memo to Defense Department personnel dated Tuesday, Esper stressed the importance of staying away from politics," NBC News's Courtney Kube reports. "As I reminded you in February, I ask that you remember at all times our commitment as a department and as public servants to stay apolitical in these turbulent days," Esper said, per the memo.
• Esper also issued his first direct public comments on the killing of George Floyd: "Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it and to eradicate it," he said, calling Floyd's killing a "horrible crime," according to our colleagues Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan, Paul Sonne and Josh Dawsey. 

But: Later yesterday after a meeting at the White House, Esper reversed "an earlier Pentagon decision to send a couple hundred active-duty soldiers home from the Washington, D.C., region, amid growing tensions with the White House over the military response to the protests," the Associated Press first reported. 

• "The Army had made a decision to send a unit of the 82nd Airborne's rapid deployment force, about 200 troops, home from the capital region. But Mr. Trump ordered Mr. Esper during the angry meeting at the White House to reverse it, the administration official said," Schmitt, Cooper, Gibbons-Neff and Haberman report. 
• White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was less than convincing about Esper's job status: "So, guys, as of right now, Secretary Esper is still Secretary Esper," she added. "And should the president lose faith in him, we will all learn about that in the future."

Out of the chain of command: Other military officials issued forceful statements condemning racism and peaceful protests. "We must be better," the head of the National Guard, whose troops have been supporting local law enforcement in cities around the country, said in a statement.

• "If we are to fulfill our obligation as service members, as Americans, as decent human beings, we have to take our oath seriously," said Air Force General Joseph Lengyel, the chief of the Guard. "We cannot tolerate racism, discrimination or casual violence. We cannot abide divisiveness and hate. "

General Joseph Lengyel

✔@ChiefNGB

We must do better.

It remains to be seen if Republican lawmakers publicly check what some have described as Trump's autocratic displays of authority. 

Allan

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