In a statement released to CNN, Kelly, a retired Marine general who lost his own son in combat in Afghanistan, not only wrote of Trump’s disdain for wounded and fallen veterans but also described Trump as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. … A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
Kelly concluded: “There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”
I’m glad Kelly has finally spoken out publicly, but I respectfully disagree with his final point. With Trump leading the Republican primary field by a large margin, there is a lot more that needs to be said — and Kelly is one of the people who needs to say it. He needs to speak out in a much more public and sustained way about the unique threat Trump poses to American democracy, and he needs to be joined in doing so by two other retired generals who also served in the upper echelons of the Trump administration: former defense secretary Jim Mattis and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
All three men, who were often referred to as “Trump’s generals” or “the adults in the room,” have made clear that they hold Trump in well-justified disdain.
Mattis announced his resignation as defense secretary in 2018 by releasing a letter that noted Trump did not share his views about “treating allies with respect” and was not “clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors” — a reference, presumably, to Trump’s well-known affinity for dictators Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
In June 2020, at the height of the protests over the murder of George Floyd, Trump marched through Washington’s Lafayette Square, which had been cleared of peaceful protesters, for a bizarre photo op with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mattis subsequently issued a statement in which he wrote: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. … We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
McMaster has been a bit more circumspect, but he has condemned Trump for “aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” to undermine U.S. democracy and for telling the Proud Boys militia to “stand back and stand by”: “No leader,” McMaster said, “should encourage any group that is based on a narrow identity that aims to supersede our identity as Americans.”
The danger Trump poses to our democracy might not matter to his cult followers — for many of them, it’s a selling point — but it’s a different matter when it comes to general-election voters who remain up for grabs. With Trump and President Biden essentially tied in head-to-head matchups, the Wall Street Journal’s polling shows that 26 percent of the electorate remains undecided between the two candidates, hard as that might be to believe. It is those voters who will determine the fate of American democracy, and many of them don’t follow the news closely. Almost none of them, I’m sure, have heard of Kelly’s latest statement denouncing Trump.
Kelly, Mattis and McMaster — joined, ideally, by other disaffected Trump appointees, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, former defense secretary Mark T. Esper and former attorney general William P. Barr — need to mount an “Unfit to Serve” tour targeting early-primary states and general-election swing states. They need to spend every free minute over the next year alerting undecided voters to the danger of electing Trump again — before it’s too late.
It would be unprecedented for such high-level appointees to warn that the president they served poses a danger to U.S. democracy. Kelly, Mattis and McMaster, as generals who have devoted their lives to serving their country, have particular standing to make the case in a way that might make apathetic voters take notice. Simply issuing written statements is not enough: They need to go on TV and on the stump to get the message out.
“It’s pretty clear in the focus groups that when swing voters backslide toward Trump, it’s because they’re hazy on what they hate about him and are frustrated with the economy,” Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, told me. “A stark reminder from respected generals can remind swing voters why their hesitations about Biden pale in comparison to their fears of putting Trump back in the White House.”
Knowing Kelly, Mattis and McMaster as I do, I am sure all three of them will resist this advice for a variety of reasons, the most important being that they have been inculcated with the ethos that the military must remain resolutely apolitical. This is a noble impulse, but they served Trump in political, not military, posts (even if McMaster remained on active duty). They are in a different category from the two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Trump administration — Gens. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Mark A. Milley — who plainly share the trio’s concerns about Trump’s unfitness to serve.
It would indeed be inappropriate for Dunford or Milley to campaign against Trump. But it would not only be appropriate for Kelly, Mattis and McMaster to do so — it is imperative that they do so. This would be one last duty they could perform for the country they love, to save us from a candidate whom Milley, in his retirement ceremony last month, rightly referred to as a “wannabe dictator.”
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