In past posts, I’ve been hypothesizing how US military active and retired personnel, their families and those who work in fields like intelligence gathering, US national security, etc. who’ve historically been reliable republican party voters, can change. This time, I’m believing that most can be easily enticed to help to reelect the democrat President Joe Biden and to vote for either democrats or Never Trump republicans for all other elected offices.

If the GOP MAGA ex-president were to ever see the White House again, one of the first institutions that he would change to suit his needs as a priority over defending the US Constitution would be the US military. Military leaders must know this. And so, why aren’t they taking a more active role in stopping him by frequently and regularly going public about the ex-president being a clear and present danger to US national security interests.

Most military and associated entities assigned with protecting US democracy are aghast at how the Putin apologist ex-president has been ordering his GOP MAGA US congressional sycophants to bolster Russia’s standing in the world by not allowing passage of a bill designed to fund extra monies for Ukrainians to defend their sovereignty as a democratically run country from Russian aggression, or block the passage of a conservative border control bill because the ex-president wants to use immigration problems at the US southern border as a campaign issue, even though he refers to this problem as an existential threat to US security. Anyone who cares about US armed forces, those implementing US foreign policy, US standing in the world as a leader would be turned off by his frequent criticisms of NATO and how under his administration it’s likely that the USA would withdraw its membership.

With the recent killings of 3 US soldiers and about 40 injured in Jordan by drones operated by Iranian backed fighters, the middle east being a tinder box, the ongoing 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas war, US military soldiers deserve a more competent commander-in chief who doesn’t describe US missile defense systems as “Ding, Ding, Ding, Boom Whoosh;” who doesn’t hero worship leaders like Victor Orben of Hungary, Xi Jinping of China, Kim Jong-Un of N Korea, Vladimir Putin of Russia; and who doesn’t claim to believe that it’s okay for him to take home highly classified data from the White House when anyone else doing likewise would be immediately incarcerated and called, a traitor.

Then there’s the GOP MAGA ex-president’s history of open cynicism about military service and heroism. See: 2020 Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg, “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers:’

In the December 8, 2023 Atlantic report, “A Military Loyal to Trump.” Tom Nichols explains how in 2020, the military formed a bulwark against Donald Trump’s antidemocratic designs and how changing that would be a top-tiered priority, after he ordered retribution against all perceived enemies.

Excerpts:

“The last time around, Trump’s efforts to pack the Defense Department with cranks and flunkies came too late to bring the military under his full political control. The president and his advisers were slow-footed and disorganized, and lacked familiarity with Washington politics. They were hindered as well by the courage and professionalism of the military officers and civilian appointees who, side by side, serve in the Defense Department.”

“Trump now nurses deep grudges against these officers and civilians, who slow-rolled and smothered his various illegal and autocratic impulses, including his enraged demand to kill the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2017, and his desire to deploy America’s military against its own citizens during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.”

“The 2020 election, of course, is the source of Trump’s chief grudge against senior military leaders. General Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was especially determined to keep the armed forces out of the various schemes to stay in office devised by the Trump team and its allies, including a delusional plan, proposed by retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, to have the military go into swing states and seize voting machines. Trump has since implied (in response to a profile of Milley by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) that Milley should get the death penalty. Milley reportedly believes that Trump, if reelected, will try to jail him and other senior national-security figures, a concern shared by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.”

“In a second term, Trump would combine his instincts for revenge and self-protection. He would seek not only to get even with an officer corps that he thinks betrayed him, but also to break the military as one of the few institutions able to constrain his attempts to act against the Constitution and the rule of law.”

“Publicly, trump presents himself as an unflinching advocate for the military, but this is a charade. He has no respect for military people or their devotion to duty. He loves the pomp and the parades and the salutes and the continual use of “sir,” but as retired Marine General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, said in 2023, Trump “couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably” when he was in office. Privately, as Goldberg has reported, Trump has called American war dead “losers” and “suckers,” and has said that wounded warriors are disgusting and should be kept out of sight.”

“Trump instead prizes military people who serve his ego and support his antidemocratic instincts. He thinks highly of Flynn, for example, who had to resign after 22 days as national security adviser and is now the marquee attraction at various gatherings of Christian nationalists and conspiracy theorists around the country. In late 2020, angered by his election loss and what he saw as the disloyalty within the national-security community, Trump fired or forced out top Defense Department leaders and tried to replace them with people more like Flynn. The brazen actions that the 45th president took in his final, desperate weeks in office—however haphazard—illustrate the magnitude of the threat he may pose to the military if he is reelected.”

“On November 9, 2020, Trump dumped Esper and named Christopher Miller, a retired colonel and Pentagon bureaucrat, as acting secretary of defense. Miller took along Kash Patel, a Trump sycophant, as his chief of staff. Trump sent Douglas Macgregor, another retired colonel and a pro-Russia Fox News regular, to Miller as a senior adviser. (Earlier, Trump had attempted and failed to make Macgregor the ambassador to Germany.) Trump installed Anthony Tata—a retired one-star Army general who has claimed that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that a former CIA director was trying to have Trump assassinated—in the third-most-senior job at the Pentagon. A few months earlier, the Senate had wisely declined to confirm Tata’s appointment to that position, but in November, Trump gave him the job in an acting capacity anyway.”

See Atlantic articles:

From the November 2023 issue: Jeffrey Goldberg on how Mark Milley held the line

From the January/February 2024 issue: Anne Applebaum on how Trump will abandon NATO

Read: Trump’s open plot to dismantle the federal government

Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US | AP …