Sitrep: Ex-general worried Trump will sack senior officers who go against him

A former senior general in the US military has expressed concerns that incoming President Donald Trump will fire anyone who speaks out against him.

Mr Trump will need cabinet officials and military chiefs to advise, discuss and then do as asked – often called the guardrails of the US system of government.

During his first term in office, President Trump had many former top military officers in some of those posts.

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But almost all of them fell out with him very publicly.

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of US Army Europe, told the BFBS Sitrep podcast he was "very anxious if there is a litmus test of some sort" that checks the loyalty of any incoming officials.

He said this check would be carried out to "make sure that if he says something that the chief of the army or the navy or the chairman will do exactly what he said, versus saying 'Well, Mr President… we can't do that, you can't use the military to do this thing'".

Lt Gen Hodges explained: "My sense is that he and his team will want to remove or not have anybody in uniform that would offer that."

This opinion was echoed by Sir Mark Lyall Grant, a former UK ambassador to the United Nations and the UK's national security adviser when Mr Trump first won the presidency eight years ago. 

In his role, he overlapped the first few months of the first Trump presidency. 

"After inauguration I had three opposite numbers as national security adviser," he said.

"This time the only people who will agree to go into the White House are those who are true believers or people who are Yes Men and are not prepared necessarily to speak truth to power, at least in the early months.

"I don't think that is a good decision-making environment."

Some of those ex-Trump staffers helped form a group known as NSL4A, or National Security Leaders for America.

In the latest election, they backed Kamala Harris, with more than 250 retired admirals and generals signing a letter of endorsement, including Brigadier General Peter Zwack.

"We hope that this is a thinking group and not a rubber stamp, because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and others out there are watching very, very closely," he said.

"By the end of his first term, all his generals short one or two of them were gone. And that leaves a lot of distaste for the military, both active and retired.

"When you say that your former chairman of the joint chiefs was a traitor and should be executed or soldiers that had been captured or killed in war were losers, it doesn't compute. 

"It doesn't work and so increasingly you had men and women who by definition are loyal, but not blindly loyal – and this is what [Trump] was looking for."

One of those was General Mark Milley, who is "close to the top of Trump's retribution list", according to Lt Gen Hodges.

"I'm disappointed that not enough other retired senior officers have spoken out about the appalling fact that a former president would use the word 'hang' and his former chairman of the joint chiefs in the same sentence," he said.

"If people are serious about the… President talking about having a strong military, that means it has to be respected.

"And it has to be respected because of its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States."

You can listen to Sitrep wherever you get your podcasts, including on the Forces News YouTube channel.