Ordinarily, when U.S. military leaders are being considered for a fourth star, they meet with the defense secretary at the Pentagon discuss their future and possible promotion. But with growing questions about Secretary Pete Hegseth and the degree to which he’s calling the shots at the DOD, The New York Times reported on a different model in the current administration.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has begun requiring that nominees for four-star-general positions meet with President Trump before their nominations are finalized, in a departure from past practice, said three current and former U.S. officials. The move, though within Mr. Trump’s remit as commander in chief, has raised worries about the possible politicization of the military’s top ranks by a president who has regularly flouted norms intended to insulate the military from partisan disputes.
While the Times’ reporting has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the White House effectively confirmed the story. “President Trump wants to ensure our military is the greatest and most lethal fighting force in history, which is why he meets with four-star-general nominees directly to ensure they are war fighters first — not bureaucrats,” a White House spokesperson told the Times.
We were warned that steps like these were coming.
About a month before Election Day 2024, Trump said during an interview, “The military is bad. We have generals that do such a bad job.” A week earlier, the Republican explicitly said he intended to create a system that would help keep “woke generals” out of the Defense Department.
He’d lashed out at U.S. generals before, but this was new: Trump sketched out a system in which military leaders would be subjected to some kind of ideological review.
That was nine months ago. Now, the president is apparently taking related steps in the same direction, personally screening generals before they can earn their fourth stars.
Journalist and historian Garrett Graff noted in response to the reporting, “Trump is steadily poisoning the nonpartisan apolitical nature of the military’s leadership—which will be a bell hard for future presidents to unring once it’s happened.” Darin Self, a political scientist at Brigham Young University, added, “You don’t need a scholar of authoritarianism and the military like me to tell you this does not produce good outcomes.” There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest the White House is blurring the lines between partisan politics and the country’s armed forces, and the more these efforts advance, the more dangerous it becomes to our constitutional system of government. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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