The U.S. generals and admirals who were summoned to listen to bizarre remarks from Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had nothing to say publicly in the aftermath of the event. That was to be expected: Given the circumstances, there wasn’t much they could say.

But if the president and his beleaguered Pentagon chief were hoping to impress defense officials with their twisted vision, there’s reason to believe they failed. Politico reported:

Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all. ‘More like a press conference than briefing the generals,’ said one defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to fears of retribution. ‘Could have been an email.’

Politico’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC, quoted another defense official who described the political event as a “total waste of money.”

(The precise cost remains unclear, although congressional Democrats circulated an analysis from the Center for Strategic & International Studies that put the overall price tag at roughly $6 million, with American taxpayers picking up the entire tab. The president told reporters ahead of his remarks, “There’s a little bit of expense, not much.”)

But the underlying question deserves an answer. If defense officials were left wondering why, exactly, the Pentagon had ordered several hundred U.S. military leaders to leave their posts and travel thousands of miles on short notice, only to hear a couple of political speeches, they deserve to know the rationale behind this absurdity.

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Part of the answer appears self-evident: Hegseth wanted to engage in a self-indulgent performance in which the former Fox News host suggested that he knew more than generals and admirals about transforming the armed forces, all while hoping to get some buy-in for his culture war crusade.

Similarly, the grievance-filled president, reinforcing fears that military leaders have harbored for months, seemed eager to convince generals and admirals that he expected them to join his campaign against “the enemy within” — complete with deployments on American streets, which Trump characterized as military “training grounds.”

But it also became clear over the course of the event that Trump was eager, if not desperate, to advance his politicization of the military and to do radical harm to civil-military relations.

The president has invested quite a bit of time characterizing the military as an instrument of his power. That was true in June, when the Republican spoke at Fort Bragg and treated U.S. troops like they were just another MAGA audience — “Make America Great Again” merchandise was available on base at the time — and it was true again this week in Virginia.