Trump’s Vindictiveness on Display in Removal of Former Officials’ Security - Rob Horowitz

Trump’s Vindictiveness on Display in Removal of Former Officials’ Security - Rob Horowitz

President Trump’s abrupt removal of General Mark Milley, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo’s security protection is not only petty and vindictive; it’s truly dangerous, putting their lives at risk, along with the lives of their family, friends, and innocent bystanders. As the president is well aware, all three men are still under threat from Iran.  Ironically, they remain on Iran’s hit list due to their roles in successfully completing a mission ordered by Mr. Trump himself in his first term:  the killing of Iranian general Soleimani.

 

One might think that the fact that these former officials’ lives are endangered by actions they took at his request might deter even Mr. Trump from exercising his well-established and unbecoming spitefulness.  Any opportunity to punish one of his critics, however, is apparently too juicy to pass up.  Unfortunately, the seriousness of the potential consequences serves as no deterrent for the president when the upside is putting people in harm’s way who he perceives as disloyal or who have the temerity to criticize him.

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In this instance, Mr. Trump’s decision was so reckless that two of his top allies in the United States Senate, Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, urged him to reconsider. “I would encourage the president to revisit the decision for those people who are being targeted by Iran, as the president was targeted for assassination by Iran,” Senator Cotton told Fox News. Mr. Cotton, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, confirmed that he had reviewed current intelligence and the threat was still present.

 

In his response to Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw his Secret Service protection, John Bolton noted that the president’s immediate predecessor had adhered to the usual norms of focusing on the level of threat in determining whether a former official is extended Secret Service protection. “Notwithstanding my criticisms of President Biden’s national-security policies, he nonetheless made the decision to extend that protection to me in 2021,” President Trump’s former National Security Adviser said,

 

The president reserved his fullest display of thinly disguised vengeance for General Milley, the retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed by Mr. Trump himself.  During his first day on the job, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, at the president’s behest, ordered the Pentagon’s inspector general to review Milley’s actions “while serving as the nation’s top uniformed officer to determine if a demotion is warranted,” AP reported.  The threadbare pretext for this investigation was the fact that General Milley had 2 routine conversations with his Chinese counterpart, knocking down rumors that President Trump, in the midst of clinging to power during his reckless attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, was going to order an attack.  In other words, General Milley was doing his job, preventing a miscalculation by a nuclear-armed adversary and keeping us safe.

 

The real reason for the investigation into General Milley, of course, is that he emerged as an outspoken critic of the president.  Referring to Mr. Trump at his retirement ceremony from the military, for instance, General Milley said, “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

 

“Character is destiny,” famously said the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.  This oft-repeated phrase may overstate the case.  But when we have returned to the Oval Office, a man his own chief of staff, General John Kelly, ‘remarking on the depths of his dishonesty,” called the ‘most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” it behooves us to be on high alert.

 

In the wake of a blizzard of destructive actions by the president-- including the purge of FBI agents, inflationary tariffs, the failed unconstitutional attempt to block the distribution of Congressionally approved federal funding, and the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement--the removal of security protections from former officials who have been critical of the president may seem like a small thing.  They are a telling indication, however, that we have elected someone who does not have the character, empathy, or judgment for the awesome responsibilities to which he is entrusted. In his second term, he is already demonstrating that he is emboldened to act on his selfish and venal instincts, putting retribution and punishing perceived political enemies ahead of what is in the nation’s best interests.

 

This requires the rest of us to do more—to fight for the American values that we cannot count on our president to uphold.  Fortunately, in our democracy, there are plenty of tools at our disposal. It's time for we “citizens” to begin using them.