How many of the top brass do you suppose support Trump, even after everything he’s said about the military (executing Milley, “generals are dumb,” dead soldiers are losers, etc)?
Instinctively, I’d say “Very few” but after a little thought I came back to: military types are pretty conservative, lots of them probably think their peers are pretty dumb, and of course Generals Flynn are certainly extreme MAGAnuts for sure. So not zero.
What percentage of current general officers would you guess voted for Trump at least once? What percentage would you guess would vote for him in 2024? What percentage would willingly serve on his staff and obey any order he gave them?
Using the vast database of my personal family for evidence, it is clear to me that military service members are far and away Republican, and as such would support a literal dog turd if you put an (R) on the steaming end of it.
Reagan’s military service during WWII consisted of making training films and bond drives, yet he is venerated today as some kind of warrior-poet hero. Carter, who while never seeing combat served with distinction as one of the early officers in Rickover’s “Nuclear Navy” with distinction and risked personal health in dismantling the core of the Chalk River Reactor which suffered a partial meltdown. it was widely regarded with scorn for not getting the US embroiled in another war or engaging in inflammatory rhetorically exchanges with the Soviets during his tenure. Military members and veterans regarded Bush 41 as ‘weak’ for not deposing Saddam Hussain and were understandably ambivalent regarding Bill Clinton’s evasiveness about how he avoided the draft post revocation of student deferments despite being “1-A”, even though they loved on Bush 43 despite a more obvious use of family connections to avoid being sent to Viet Nam and still never completing his Texas Air National Guard obligations.
The military—both leadership and rank & file—despise Biden for the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and general end to the “Global War On Terror” (never mind that his administration was just following through with obligations negotiated with the Taliban under Trump and the GWOT is still in a full-throated third phase, just in a more covert manner) and venerate Trump in insensate fashion even as he denigrated them as suckers and ignores the advice from military leadership because Trump effectively dog-whistles to the undercurrent of institutional racism and a tendency to revere ‘good’ authoritarianism over ‘weak’ liberalism.
“The top brass” probably don’t think very much of Trump as a leader, and certainly not as any kind of strategic genius, but they all want a better flag and serving under a mercurial narcissist is a good way to be set for promotion in a nominally stoic hierarchy where promotion generally relies upon waiting for those above you to hit their retirement age. Of course, like serving under a certain ‘Dark Lord’, once you’ve gotten the top slot career longevity may be measured in weeks if not days. But hey, the point is to climb that ladder and collect those stars, amirite?
Didn’t Trump just recently refer to the top brass of the military as some of the dumbest people he’s ever known? I don’t see this hurting him. He’s already denigrated McCain for getting shot down in Vietnam, he thinks dead servicemen are “losers,” and he doesn’t want parades with disabled veterans because it looks bad. Trump’s followers don’t give a damn.
Of course. But I’m not wondering about the feelings of his followers–just your views of the percentages of the general officers who support Trump.
I’m concerned because some people seem to voice a lot of confidence in the integrity of the generals and the Supreme Court to act as restraints on Trump in the event he runs, and/or wins the presidency in 2024. I don’t have a lot of confidence in either group, despite some indications that his support in these bulwarks of democracy is weak. I’d like to know how strong or how weak you think his support really is.
I think most senior military officers—Michael Flynn aside—have the notion of “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” pretty thoroughly drilled into their identity, and few would openly support naked treason in the way that Trump would engage upon it.
The Supreme Court as currently constituted…not so much.
Trump calls a lot of supporters names and insults them, and they all think that he’s referring to someone else; definitely not them because they fall into the category of “…some, I assume, are good people.”
Seems to me that the political distribution of political alignment is much the same as for the rest of the population. The enlisted ranks, who tend to be less educated, are more likely to vote Republican while the more educated officers are more likely to vote Democratic. I think voting is much more related to education level than by vocation.
The answer is that no one knows, so we are guessing.
There are about 900 U.S. generals and flag officers. They would have a slightly better idea than I do, but I doubt they use their time, when among large numbers of colleagues, asking them who they voted for (or, if they did, getting a lot of answers).
I like an international perspective, and so will bring up the factoid that colonels lead coups to overthrow democracies, not generals. This suggests that generals generally are well-educated (as pointed out by BobLibDem) and, like most elite institution educated people, do not want leaders who are enamored of presidency for life.
The fact that this is a mystery to all of us is, perhaps, the problem. If we could be confident that the answer was “Well over 90% of the generals would oppose Trump violently if necessary” that would be a sort of comfort, but we can’t say that, can we?
And if the answer were “Well over 90% of the generals would support Trump violently if asked to” that would REALLY disturbing, enough so that we (citizens) would almost have to make immediate plans to check the military’s power.
But we’re square in the middle, I think. Which is disturbing in itself.
I highly doubt that anywhere near 50% of flag officers and senior staff would execute a clearly illegal order from a mercurial would-be demagogue. Senior commissioned officers who have navigated through the promotion labyrinth tend to be very conservative (in the colloquial sense, not necessarily sociopolitical alignment) and will not want to place themselves in a position that could compromise either their career viability or issue orders that could subject them to a general court martial, which is often a career-ending move whether they are convicted or exonerated. Michael Flynn is an anomaly among flag officers for how brashly outspoken and flagrantly proto-fascist he is.
The real danger here isn’t Trump himself, per se; he’s already demonstrated his complete, Stooges-esque ineptitude in trying to foment a coup and retain the office, and while he did manage to attract a number of high profile conservative politicians and public figures into his orbit, he also burns them with such regularity that even if he could find a few gophers in the flag ranks to support him, he wouldn’t know how to use them to rally the rest of senior command who recognize that proximity to Trump is a career-burning position. Trump isn’t an analogue to Adolf Hitler; he’s closer to Kurt von Schleicher or Wilhelm Frick. The danger is all of the would-be Führers who are carefully watching him and taking note on what works (and doesn’t), and are also clever enough to not just issue blatantly illegal orders but instead carefully filter the upper ranks and condition the military leadership and general public to accept increasing negations of civil liberties under seemingly ‘reasonable’ pretexts.
This is a bit old, but here are some numbers about where things stood back in 2020, and it wasn’t that great for Trump.
Among active-duty service members surveyed in the poll, 41 percent said they would vote for Biden, the Democratic nominee, if the election was held today. Only 37 percent said they plan to vote to re-elect Trump.
Another 13 percent said they plan to vote for a third-party candidate, and nearly 9 percent said they plan on skipping the election altogether. About 40 percent of troops surveyed identified as Republican or Libertarian, 16 percent Democrats, and 44 percent independent or another party.
Regarding officers vs enlisted…
The splits between officer and enlisted views within the poll are notable. More than 59 percent of officers said they have a poor view of the president, with more than half saying they strongly disapprove.
Among enlisted respondents, 47 percent said they have an unfavorable view, and nearly 39 percent a favorable view. Enlisted views of Trump’s performance in office have consistently been more favorable than those of officers in the poll over the last four years.
Of course things may have changed in the last 3 years, but how ever much they started drifting back in Trumps favor, I think they would tank if Trump actively attempted to use them to violate the constitution. The danger of course is if Trump becomes president kicks out any who are disloyal and replaces them with toadies, and act which in and of its self would tank his support among the military but if successful might make it moot.
I am a veteran and in my experience, there are a lot of Trump fans in the military and veteran community, and it astounds me to no end. I understand being conservative but this goes beyond that as we’ve all witnessed in the MAGA community. They’re in the cult and the evidence that Trump is Putin’s asset, saying that he doesn’t like veterans, didn’t want to see our wounded troops when they came home from overseas, and didn’t go to the WWI memorial in France just falls on deaf ears.
I am in several Airborne related Facebook groups and several of them have members that are fully into the right wing, conspiracy stuff. And they’re pretty quick to alter their opinions when Trump says something. There was a huge uptick in people badmouthing McCain when Trump started badmouthing him where before people really didn’t bother with the Senator other than supporting his service.
General Milley is another recipient of this. The people in these groups supported Milley when Trump gassed the people at the church for a photo op but then turned on him shortly thereafter. Someone in the group said that Milley was a terrible team leader during his time in Special Forces so that’s been an ongoing view of him.
Lt. Col Vindman is another officer who is not liked in this community. Somone accused him of being an “oxygen thief” in Ranger school so he gets called that on these pages whenever something about him comes up.
I know few of the members in these groups personally but it seems that most of my former comrades are full on in the Trump camp. Many of their posts follow the Fox talking points. I know a captain who is a total conspiracy nut who posts weird links every day. I have gotten to a point where I don’t want to participate in any reunions or veterans groups because I don’t want to deal with the emboldened nutjobs who will be there. I am frankly surprised when I encounter a veteran or service member whose political alignment is similar to mine.
You know, we may be talking about chicken and egg issues here as well.
Especially at the enlisted man level, there is a very strong tendency, and in fact, need to conform. And the military has probably always arguably been more conservative (in the traditional definition of the word, IE slow and measured, if any change) than the general population.
So combine those two, and you’d (among a host of other reasons, especially the comparatively recent Fox-aganda info bubble but each could be their own thread) expect the military as a whole to lean conservative, which combined with the hawkish, 2nd amendment advertising of the Republican party, makes it extremely likely that the majority of American’s military establishment support whomever has an (R) behind their name.
Add in elements of America’s (not just military, probably amplified by the same forces) obsession with a certain type of toxic, smug, and violent masculinity, and it gets worse. After all, Trump doesn’t attack winners (perceived), but losers in the military game. After all McCain (as a not random example) was captured, but any ‘Hero’ wouldn’t have had that happen to them. And our military has been conditioned since the first Gulf War to consider themselves heroes. Which makes it so much easier on them to commit grave sins, because, after all, they know they’re on the side of angels.
In other words, yeah, the military is likely 70-80% across the board for Trump. Same for our police forces, and for nearly identical reasons to the above. And I doubt enough of the rest would strongly kick up a fuss about illegal orders as long as there was anything resembling a sufficient fig leaf.
I think THE ATLANTIC was reading this thread before I thought of the OP–here’s a pretty good article arguing for Mark Milley’s control against Trump’s attempt to run the military: a fair, skeptical assessment
