A retired military officer and activist warned conservative commentator Bill Kristol on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s policies are dangerously weakening the American armed forces.
“In my retirement speech, I mentioned the fact that we were not being tossed away because we had failed in any way,” Col. Breen Fram, an American astronautical engineer and former colonel, told Bill Kristol. “It was because what we had done could not be hidden away if we remained in uniform. That we had done our job so well that we had won the respect of our friends, our colleagues, and the people that we worked for or led, that having us there continued to put to the torch the lie that they were saying about our character and our capability.”
She added, “The executive order basically said that we were dishonorable, undisciplined liars who lacked the humility required for military service. So that attack on our character on top of the attack that they made, the claim that we were undeployable because of medication that we were taking long-term. And I know we're gonna get into this, but it's pretty crazy that now we have Secretary Hegseth in his quest for a high-T Department of War saying that long-term hormone replacement therapy is a lethality enhancer for some, but is a clear readiness crisis for others. The hypocrisy behind all of this is overwhelming.”
Fram also called out Trump for purging people from the military who do not share both his views and those of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Not only is the science clear, but the military had embraced this—that it takes multiple perspectives,” Fram told Kristol. “Yes, there are certain situations where we know an order is important to be carried out immediately because lives are on the line, or we need a snap decision. But in most cases, we're planning for the future. We are building the force and our readiness, and we need to consider all the options. And if people are not willing to speak up, you get these hollow armies that look amazing but will collapse at the first sign of adversity.”
As one example, Fram talked about Trump’s Golden Dome proposal.
“My experience was with the Golden Dome proposal, which was originally Iron Dome, but of course, anything that Trump touches has to be gilded,” Fram said. “So it immediately turned to Golden Dome. And as this proposal came over for this worldwide missile shield, I with 23 years of service as an astronautical engineer, thought, maybe, maybe my input would be valued on this. But when I said that this was the least technologically feasible, highest cost way of accomplishing this mission, and I said, ‘Have we told the political appointees this?’ one of my bosses up the chain said, ‘We can only tell them yes.’”
She concluded, So in the end, it just, again, hits on building this hollow force—a force that looks strong, but we're weakening it out from the inside.”
Similarly, Fram described the problems with Trump’s proposed “Trump-class battleship.”
“The Trump-class battleship—this is a ship that is all about aesthetics,” Fram said. “It is about looking good. It is Trump, again, calling something his golden fleet. We retired our last battleship in the early '90s because they were obsolete. And yes, a ship that may have energy weapons and may have large storage capacity could have uses. But what we're really proposing to build is a floating target. And the Chinese, the Russians, know this. They won't be impressed by this gleaming ship on the horizon. They'll be tracking its signature from space and counting the number of missiles it takes to disarm it and to sink it. And that's what this is.”
She concluded, “It is a monument, just like the arch that's going up, uh, across the Potomac from Washington, as a monument to Trump. And a monument at sea will sink. And it will be a terrible disaster.”
Fram is far from alone in arguing that Trump is weakening the military. In July, Steve Schmidt, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, said that his abandonment of NATO hurts American foreign policy.
“NATO was built by men like Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, sustained by John Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton,” Schmidt said at the time. “It is the most successful military alliance in world history. It is what emerged from what Franklin Roosevelt called the United Nations — an alliance of free nations bound together by common defense, that says an attack on one is an attack on all. It is the greatest deterrent force in history, and Donald Trump despises it like he despises the values of these free nations.”
Similarly, in March, conservative foreign policy analyst Daniel DePetris said that by overthrowing the Venezuelan government, Trump has weakened the US from a geopolitical standpoint.
By successfully overthrowing the Venezuelan government, President Donald Trump believes he is flexing American strength — but, according to a right-leaning foreign policy expert, Trump may actually be “throwing it all away.”
“Unlike Russia and China, the United States has been blessed with advantageous geography and benevolent neighbors,” DePetris wrote for Reason Magazine. “Both have been sources of strength. The so-called Donroe Doctrine risks throwing it all away.”
Fram, Schmidt and DePetris were joined in their criticism in February by Joseph Bosco, who served as China country director under President George W. Bush’s Defense Department from 2005 to 2006. He called out Trump’s failure to remain loyal to American allies like Taiwan and Ukraine.
“History will brand the U.S. failure to ensure Ukraine’s victory and prevent Taiwan’s fall as the time when America fell from greatness and her ‘cunning’ but miscalculating enemies plunged the world into a new global conflict,” Bosco wrote in The Hill.
