America Has a Rogue President

 America Has a Rogue President

Feb. 24, 2025

By Frank Kendall

Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration

President Trump’s decision to fire senior military leaders without cause is foolish and a disgrace. It politicizes our professional military in a dangerous and debilitating way. What frightens me even more is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the Defense Department. Their removal is one more element of this administration’s attack on the rule of law, and an especially disturbing part.

Let us start with the senior officers. As secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration, I worked closely with Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. for two years when he was chief of staff of the Air Force, and for more than a year when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In my entire 55 years of working in national security in many capacities, I have never known a steadier, wiser and more professional, patriotic or honorable officer than C.Q. Brown. Gen. James Slife and Adm. Lisa Franchetti are also extremely capable and professional officers whom I know well and deeply admire. They served for decades with honor and distinction over many administrations.

It pains me to see these fine people being treated so unfairly and, for the first time in my career, to see dedicated, apolitical military professionals being removed without cause. I am worried about political loyalty becoming a criterion to hold high military positions. For now, I have confidence that our professional military has nurtured dozens of highly qualified senior officers capable of holding positions of trust and responsibility, people who can provide leadership at the Pentagon and offer sound military advice to our civilian leaders.

But that optimism doesn’t extend to the consequences of removing the military’s top judge advocates general, the senior military professionals who interpret and enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide troops in the field. They have the independent legal authority to tell any military commander or political appointee that an order from the president or the secretary of defense is unlawful, cannot be given and should not be obeyed.

Of the three JAGs who were dismissed, I know Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and worked with him for more than three years. His legal advice was always sound, professional and well supported. It is hard to imagine there was any reason to remove him, other than the obvious one of replacing him with someone more loyal to Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and therefore more willing to interpret the law consistent with their desires.

If there is one characteristic of this president and this administration, it is the utter lack of respect for legal constraints. Mr. Trump has been clear about his views. Among many examples, he recently wrote, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” It is clear from Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, public appearances, writings and support for convicted war criminals that he also does not believe JAG officers should constrain war fighters — or presumably the president and secretary of defense.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth will now get to choose the JAG leadership for all three military departments. One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement. This is part of a much larger pattern of disrespect, even disdain, for the rule of law. We do not need JAG leaders who fit this pattern.

One of the most admirable characteristics of the American military is that all serving members are trained to understand that America stands for more than naked self-interest. Above all, it stands up for the Constitution and the rule of law, including the laws of armed conflict and those that restrict the use of the military against American citizens. Undermining those core principles is a disservice to our men and women in uniform and to everything America has stood for throughout my life. We are in danger when the legal constraints on how the president uses the military, including within the United States, are ignored or brushed aside.

My experiences with our JAG officers have always been positive. One stands out in particular. Years ago, I was an observer for the nonprofit organization Human Rights First at a legal proceeding for a detainee held at the military facility at Guantánamo Bay. In a briefing to observers and the media, the lead JAG defense attorney made a statement to the following effect: Whoever set up this prosecution system assumed that there would be quick trials with no meaningful defense by the assigned JAG officers. Those people did not understand JAG lawyers. We will support the rule of law and defend our clients, whomever they are.

I have never been prouder to be an American than I was in that moment. We will see if the new JAG leadership lives up to this standard.

Our country is in uncharted territory. We have an administration that is waging war against the rule of law. The evidence is everywhere. We don’t yet know how far it will go as it seeks to control, reinterpret, rewrite, ignore or defy legal constraints, including the Constitution itself. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it’s time for the American people, across the political spectrum, to recognize what is happening. America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond.

ELON MUSKRAT

 

Basic History for the Uninformed:

 

Basic History for the Uninformed:

 1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state. 

 2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state. 

 4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid-Kurdish Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Crusader Frankish and the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a Palestinian state. 

 6. Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there were the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a Palestinian state. 

 7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 8. there was the Sassanid-Persian Empire before the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 9. Before the Sassanid-Persian Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire again, not a Palestinian state. 

 10. there was the Roman Empire, not a Palestinian state, before the Byzantine Empire. 

 11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Jewish Hasmonean state, not a Palestinian state. 

 12. Before the Jewish Hasmonean state was the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 13. Before the Hellenistic Seleucid empire, there was Alexander the Great's empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 14. Before Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

 16. Before the Babylonian Empire, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were not Palestinian states. 

 17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a Palestinian state. 

 18. Before the Kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, not a Palestinian state. 

 19. Before the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a Palestinian state. 

 There have been many governments there, but never a Palestine.

TWO RUSSIANS - TYRANT AND PUSSY

 

CLUELESS DEMS AND CORRUPT CONGRESSMEN

 

ELECT A CONVICTED FELON.....

DOWD

 

Maureen Dowd

Fail, Caesar!

Feb. 22, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET

 

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, writing from Washington

“Remember, I can do whatever I want to whomever I want.”

It sounds like President Trump, to the world. But it was Caligula, to his grandmother.

At least America’s Emperor of Chaos has not made his horse a consul. Yet.

A horse might be better than some of the sketchy characters surrounding Trump.

After pillaging and gutting the U.S. government, the Western alliance and our relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump is thinking of himself as a king and cogitating on a third term. He basks in the magniloquent rhetoric of acolytes genuflecting to an instrument of divine providence.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, a group calling itself the “Third Term Project” erected a sign depicting Trump as Caesar. A wag on X wondered if they knew what happened to Caesar.

America was forged in the blood and fire of rejecting tyranny; its institutions were meticulously formed around the principle that we would never be ruled by a king.

Yet Trump delights in reposting memes of himself as a king and as Napoleon, with a line attributed to the emperor: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”

After tangling for years with a legal system he claimed was out to get him, Trump is jonesing to be above the law. (The Supreme Court slapped him back Friday, at least temporarily, for firing a government watchdog.)

His dictatorial impulses were clear when he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and egged on a mob to disrupt the certification of the election, even if it meant that his own vice president might be hanged. And now he has added imperialistic impulses, musing about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, Gaza, D.C., and mineral rights in Ukraine.

His megalomania has mushroomed. His derisive behavior toward Zelensky — how can a modestly talented reality show veteran mock Zelensky as “a modestly successful comedian”? — shows Trump can’t abide anyone saying he is doing anything wrong.

When The Associated Press refused to go along with his diktat to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the news organization was barred from covering some events with the president in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

The A.P. sued Friday afternoon. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” it said, adding, “Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”

Also on Friday, at a meeting with governors in the White House, Trump stopped abruptly to chide Gov. Janet Mills of Maine for resisting his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” the president warned the Democratic governor.

“See you in court,” she shot back.

Of course, Trump needed the last word. Of course, it had to be nasty. “Enjoy your life after governor,” he said, “because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

As Shawn McCreesh wrote in The Times, nobody had seen such a moment since Trump came back to the Oval: “Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”

I’ve been reading a book called “How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders,” written by Suetonius and translated by Josiah Osgood. Osgood writes of Caligula’s “propensity to give in to every whim and the relish he took in putting down others with cruel remarks.”

As Suetonius noted about Caligula, “To the Senate he showed no more mercy or respect. He allowed some who had achieved the highest offices to run alongside his chariot in their togas for several miles or to stand, dressed in a linen cloth, at the head or the foot of his couch as he dined.”

Sound familiar?

Some Republican lawmakers spoke up about Trump, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth caving to Russia — going against a long history of Republicans treating Russia as the “Evil Empire” — or at least with a healthy skepticism. When George W. Bush, as president, said he could look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and see his soul, John McCain warned that Putin was a “thug” and a “killer,” noting that when he looked in Putin’s eyes, he saw “a K, a B and a G.” But those who spoke up against Trump did not seem ready to do much about it. They’re still cowering before him. As Politico reported, Trump allies moved quickly to stifle dissent with the party’s defense hawks: “Vice President JD Vance and several administration officials who are close to Donald Trump Jr. have been central to the effort to sideline those with traditional conservative foreign policy views.”

After Trump ranted that Ukraine had “started” the war and that Zelensky was a “dictator,” the normally doting New York Post felt the need to put Putin on the front page with the headline: “President Trump: This Is a Dictator.”

The most vivid image of the week was an elated Elon Musk waving a chain saw at CPAC. That glee in the face of pain may come back to haunt Trump. As The Washington Post reported, many lawmakers got an earful from angry constituents about layoffs, freezes and jagged cuts, a hollowing out of government with no sense of logic or heart or safety.

Many who had hoped to tune out Trump this time realize they don’t have that luxury. It’s far more dangerous now. There are frightening moments when our 236-year-old institutions don’t look up to the challenge. With flaccid Democrats and craven Republicans, King Donald can pretty much do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

 

THE WORST KIND OF WISHFUL THINKING

 

Mona Charen

 

America Joins the Jackals

Ukraine is only the first victim.

Mona Charen

Feb 20, 2025

AS I WATCHED ELECTION RETURNS on the evening of November 5, 2024, I was struck by the sense that Americans had missed the memo. Across the nation, in blue states as well as red, county after county showed a marked rightward shift—an unmistakable signal of dissatisfaction with the Biden years. It was so familiar, so seemingly normal. What do you do when groceries are much more expensive than four years ago, the border is flooded with immigrants, and crime seems to be rising (even though it actually wasn’t)? You vote for the other guy, and if that turns out badly, well, there’s always another election in four years.

It has been only four weeks since Trump took the oath of office, and I wonder whether casual voters or even those who truly despised Biden have taken onboard what they’ve done. The American republic is undergoing a constitutional crisis as the president attempts to rule as an autocrat (“He who saves his country violates no law,” he claimed), a heedless billionaire smashes through people’s lives and complex systems he doesn’t understand with sadistic glee, the Justice Department descends into corrupt bargains antithetical to the ethical standards upheld for two centuries, a Putin/Assad apologist sits atop our intelligence agencies, a conspiracy theorist/anti-vaccine fool directs our health agencies, and the United States is attempting to reverse eighty years of world leadership.

Let’s focus on the global about-face, because however grievous the other depredations, they are, at least in theory, reversible. Abandoning world leadership is not.

It’s hard to say which is worse, Trump’s moral depravity or his stupidity, but both have been on vivid display in the past ten days vis-à-vis Ukraine. First, violating the understanding that Putin’s naked aggression made him a pariah among decent nations (he is an indicted war criminal), Trump engaged in a ninety-minute phone call with him (over Zelensky’s head), invited the dictator to visit the United States, and suggested that Russia be asked to rejoin the G7. All of these marks of favor were offered in exchange for Putin doing what? Promising to withdraw troops? Returning the kidnapped Ukrainian children? Agreeing to cease targeting hospitals and power plants? No. For chatting on the phone with the world’s most credulous narcissist.

Next, the out-of-his-depth weekend TV host–turned–secretary of defense offered two unilateral concessions to Putin by declaring that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” and that no U.S. troops would be part of any security guarantee to Ukraine.

Isolating Ukraine from Europe and keeping it out of NATO has been Russia’s aim for thirty years. While NATO membership was not offered, it was never entirely rebuffed either—until now. Though Hegseth attempted to walk back his comments in the face of criticism, the damage was done. Before a single water glass was filled at the negotiating table, the United States conceded some of Russia’s main aims. Besides, much worse damage was right around the corner, emanating from the vice president.

JD Vance delivered the most shameful address by an American leader to a European audience in living memory. Speaking to the Munich Security Conference, Vance said, “The threat I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s . . . the threat from within.”

Vance did not mention Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine at all. Instead, he presumed to lecture America’s allies on their supposed failure to uphold our shared values. How so? By restricting speech too harshly and—the truly soul-crushing part—being too intolerant of neo-Nazis. In sync with co-president Elon Musk, who has blessed the AfD as the only hope for Germany, Vance scolded the Germans for being unwilling to enter into coalition with a party that wants a “180 degree turnaround in the politics of remembrance” about the Holocaust, plans to deport all Muslims from Germany, and believes Germans should be proud of their soldiers from both world wars.

Vance’s presumption is breathtaking. Not only is it morally bankrupt to ignore the fascistic aggression of Russia, it is galling to watch an American leader who supported the attempted violent overthrow of our 2020 election and who has called for the president to defy the Supreme Court and rule as an autocrat to presume to speak as a small-d democrat. European diplomats exiting the meeting told the Financial Times that “America itself is now a threat to Europe.”

All of that was prelude to Trump’s total betrayal of Ukraine—and with it, America’s global role. In a screed that mixed Kremlin talking points (Zelensky is a “dictator”) with Trumpian grotesqueries (alleging that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war, and that Zelensky was a “modestly successful comedian” who hoodwinked Biden into spending $350 billion on defending Ukraine when the true figure is $183 billion, which Republicans and Democrats approved), Trump has surrendered Ukraine to its tormentors without so much as a backward glance. On the contrary, he’s bursting with self-congratulation for this “negotiation to end the war with Russia” which “all admit only TRUMP . . . can do.”

What the world knows, and will not unlearn, is that the United States cannot be trusted. Faith in America, and in basic American decency and goodwill, has kept the peace for generations, but that is over. Nations that refrained from getting nuclear weapons because they were secure under the American umbrella will rush to get bombs. Nations that resisted China’s bullying will make their accommodations. The Taiwanese can kiss their independence and their freedom goodbye. Formerly close allies will not share intelligence about impending terrorist threats. Our trading partners will make other plans and find other markets wherever possible. International lenders will think twice before underwriting more American debt.

Ukraine is the first victim of America’s decision to abandon liberal democracy in favor of an entente with the world’s jackals, but it will hardly be the last. And Americans will not escape the dire consequences.

That is what Americans did on November 5. Voters were thinking about high costs. Perhaps they are beginning to see what a price we will all pay for that election.