President Donald Trump’s Pentagon chief forced out a senior military adviser because of that officer’s link to a general who previously criticized Trump — even though the soldier in question is widely described as nonpartisan.
“He’s about the most nonpartisan guy I know,” one retired colonel told The Washington Post about the decision to fire Col. David Butler. This colonel had previously served with Butler but spoke anonymously about those experiences to avoid retaliation from Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. “That’s really too bad.”
Although Butler never publicly criticized Trump, he worked from 2019 until 2023 as a senior spokesman for the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley. Trump and Hegseth have targeted Milley in a number of ways because he maintained a nonpartisan military during Trump’s first term and after retiring called Trump “fascist to the core," warning that he is "the most dangerous person to the country." In response, Hegseth directed a suspension of Milley’s security clearance, a revocation of his security detail and a Pentagon inspector general review of his alleged past leaks to journalists. Perhaps most symbolically, Trump ordered Milley’s official portrait taken down at the Pentagon.
In addition to targeting Milley directly, Trump has also fired other military officers who worked with Milley on the Joint Chief, even though the men in question were not believed to have criticized Trump or been partisan. Described by the Post as “evenhanded leaders caught in the middle of a political knife fight,” the fired or promotion-delayed officers include Gen. James Mingus, Adm. Milton Sands, Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, Maj. Gen. James Patrick Work and Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims.
"Once lost, the legitimacy of a military that reflects and represents all Americans will be difficult to recover," Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) told The New York Times about Hegseth's actions. Similarly Rep. Jason Crow, (D-Colo.), who is a former Army Ranger, told the Times that "the message being sent to those younger soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines is that politics can and should be part of your military service."
"When the Republican meanders his way through partisan red meat when speaking at a political rally, it's tiresome but predictable," MS NOW's Steve Benen recently wrote regarding Trump's partisan speeches to the military. "When he delivers the same message to active-duty military personnel, it's a qualitatively different kind of story."
Benen added, "An apolitical military is a foundational, bedrock principle of the United States. Partisan, ideological and electoral considerations must be utterly irrelevant to what the military is and how it functions. It is nevertheless a principle for which Trump appears to have no use, creating an untenable dynamic." A retired high-ranking officer shared Benen's concerns.
"The very first sentence of Secretary Pete Hegseth's cover memo…. is retrospective and retributive, rather than prospective and mission-oriented… Strategy documents…. are not vehicles for settling political scores; they are meant to speak to a professional force tasked with executing national objectives under extreme risk," wrote retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling for The Bulwark in January.
He added, "To put it another way: To an admiral responsible for responding to encroachment and aggression by the Chinese Navy, Hegseth's opinion of the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration — when that admiral was probably a lieutenant in the middle of the ocean somewhere — isn't really important."