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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (1236886)	6/6/2020 10:30:19 AM
From: Brumar89	2 Recommendations Recommended By pocotrader Wharf Rat Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575549

Rick G. Rosner In 3 days, Trump put up 1.7 miles of new White House barriers to shield himself from citizens In 1,231 days, Trump put up 3 miles of border wall where there was no previously existing barrier WH barrier went up 230 times faster than border wall. #babygate

To: Brumar89 who wrote (1236886)	6/6/2020 6:08:05 PM
From: pocotrader	1 Recommendation Recommended By Brumar89 Respond to of 1575549

The image of Donald Trump leading his advisers to St. John’s Church may prove to be a defining one of his Presidency: Trump, passing through streets that had been cleared of protesters by tear gas, to pose with a Bible while fires burned all over the country. For many members of the military, the image contained an especially discordant note. Amid the political aides in blue suits was a barrel-chested Army officer wearing combat fatigues: General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s highest-ranking soldier. A former senior defense official described to me his disgust with that moment and the de-facto endorsement that it represented. “Walking the streets of D.C. in your combat fatigues—are you kidding me?” he said. Milley’s appearance breached the long-standing Washington norm that senior officers don’t visit the White House dressed for combat. More important, it violated one of the oldest traditions of the American constitutional order: soldiers stay out of politics. With relatively few exceptions—including the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Civil War, and Reconstruction—the armed forces have hewed to the rule that they should never be deployed against American citizens. This helps to explain why the military is among the few national institutions that still enjoy broad public confidence. But Trump has shown himself willing to trash any institution—the press, the F.B.I., the State Department—that he can’t bend to his will. This week, Milley and Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, allowed the armed forces to be drawn into Trump’s protest response—and allowed themselves to be used for Trump’s political gain. Some officials who know Milley were not surprised. “We all saw this coming,” the former senior defense official told me. When Milley got the job, in 2019, it was the culmination of an unusually forthright campaign. His primary backers were what a former senior military official described as the “West Point cabal”: Esper; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; and David Urban, a businessman and a Republican fund-raiser close to Trump. All of them were classmates at West Point, graduating in 1986. The former senior defense official suggested that Milley was too ambitious to resist flawed ideas from a superior. “Milley doesn’t push back,” he said. “He doesn’t know where his ethical line is.” Others with knowledge of the situation say that Milley drew at least one line, not long before the walk to the church. In a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump expressed a desire to quell the protests by sending forces—not the National Guard but regular military—into American cities. Milley resisted. “They got into a shouting match,” the senior military official told me. Trump finally backed down. (Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, disputed this account, saying, “There was no shouting match, in terms of any directions or any operational decision that was made.”) An official who works on military issues confirmed the confrontation, and told me that Milley said, “I’m not doing that. That’s for law enforcement.” The official described Milley as brash and pushy—traits that could be useful in the current Administration: “We have a bully in the White House, and a bully needs a bully.” Nevertheless, Milley consented to accompany Trump to St. John’s. Esper did the same. The next day, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial were covered with National Guard soldiers. The Administration’s handling of the protests has initiated an extraordinary public fight between retired officers and those who are still on the inside. Trump, Milley, and Esper have been sharply chastised, notably by the retired admiral Mike Mullen and the former general John Kelly, who was Trump’s White House chief of staff. Esper defended his walk to St. John’s, telling NBC, “I thought I was going to do two things: to see some damage and to talk to the troops.” The former Air Force four-star general Michael Hayden tweeted in response, “He’s an asshole. It’s hard to get help, isn’t it.” Video From The New Yorker