Members of the military attend a meeting convened by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia, September 30, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Military leaders are taking a major risk by treating President Donald Trump's power grabs as normal, one former Air Force secretary wrote for the New York Times, calling their "denial" strategy a "cop-out that is putting democracy at risk."
Frank Kendall III is a military veteran who most recently served as the Secretary of the Air Force under former President Joe Biden. On Tuesday, he published a new op-ed relaying his growing concerns about the air of normalcy that still pervades the military under Trump.
"I attended a military retirement ceremony last month at which Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the presiding officer and featured speaker," Kendall wrote. "It was eerily, even alarmingly normal. In a large room full of current and retired senior military officers, everyone was playing the same game of 'Let’s pretend everything is fine.'”
He continued: "Denial is one of the two approaches the nation’s senior military leaders seem to have taken to cope with Donald Trump’s presidency. When they aren’t ignoring how abnormal things have become, they turn to the other approach, claiming that they have no responsibility for the actions the armed forces have been ordered to take because those orders were 'policy' choices outside the scope of their duties. This is a cop-out, and it is putting our democracy at risk."
Kendall further explained that Caine himself has advocated for military leaders not to "say whether the military should do the things the president wants," but rather to simply "tell the president and the secretary of defense whether the military can do whatever civilian leadership asks it to do." The reality, he argued, "isn’t that simple," as the administration has already been engaged in actions that these leaders "should consider outrageous and unacceptable," citing the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Now, concerns are mounting about Trump's desire to deploy troops in American cities, to quash protests, seize election equipment or do something else equally nefarious. Kendall claims to have heard major concerns about the state of things in the military from less senior members.
"Many lower-level officers I have spoken with are privately appalled but afraid to challenge what they are seeing," Kendall wrote. "The collective hope seems to be that if they can all just go on as if nothing unusual is occurring, that this time will pass and nothing bad will happen to them — no loss of position, no demotion or forced retirement, no loss of reputation, no removal from a promotion list by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth."
He later concluded: "Our senior military leaders, including General Caine, might face even tougher tests from here. Although General Caine has indicated that there are no plans for the use of troops in the midterm elections, Mr. Trump has refused to rule out the possibility. No pretense of normality, no artificial distinction between policy and military matters, and no lawyer’s justification can relieve our senior military leaders from their oath, the burdens of their conscience, or of the judgment of the men and women they lead, the American people and history. From all of these, there is no place to hide."
Recent reports indicate that top military leaders have internally expressed the opinion that the war with Iran is effectively over, and that the U.S. has lost, though they also remain committed to carrying out any orders they received despite this depleted confidence.