Should Generals Be Loyal to the President? Yes!

somewhere between skepticism too. That's unsavory, But I don't know that I fundamentally care to just flat out who cares. And this one in particular, I find to be sort of a non story, but it highlights things that were actually genuine problems during the Trump administration, where I think we have this assumption and conservatives can lean into this assumption that the top military brass. You know, conservatives respect the military. We like the military. We want to respect

people who are generals and admirals. We like them, you know, we read Tom Clancy books. We think those guys are cool, and many of them are quite cool. But it was also true that there are a lot of problems during the Trump administration of these people ignoring Trump because they disagreed with him on policy. So there were whole stories from the Trump years about diplomatic and military personnel just

ignoring Trump's wishes. There were a lot of you know, as admirable a person as James Mattis was, there were several stories about him just kind of ignoring Trump's orders, giving Trump defense officials limited options for what they could do in response to something where Mattis had sort of his own opinions and disagreed with Trump and with other Trump's subordinates like hr McMaster who was serving as Trump's National Defense advisor John Bolton, and other times where Mattis

just kind of flat out didn't do what Trump told him to do for reasons that seemed to have more to do with policy than anything else. Here's a whole story from twenty twenty. It was published in a couple of different places. This was in The New York Post, written by Ebony Bowden. Retiring diplomat says defense officials misled

Trump on troop count in Syria. US defense officials routinely misled President Trump into believing the American troop count in Syria was a lot lower than it actually was is, a retiring US diplomat said in a bombshell interview this week. We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there, James Jeffrey, US Special Representative for Syria Engagement said in an interview with Defense One, which is sort of military focused publication.

In October of twenty nineteen, Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria, a decision controversial among lawmakers, defense officials, and dippls. Pentagon officials convinced the President to leave approximately two hundred troops behind to protect oil fields in the country's east there were at risk of falling

under ISIS control. Jeffrey said. However, the real number of troops in northeast Syria is a lot more than the two hundred Trump agreed to leave behind, Jeffrey said, with some officials putting the numbers high as nine hundred. What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal, Jeffrey told the publication. When the situation northeast Syria had been fairly

stable after we defeated. Isis Trump was inclined to pull out, He went on in each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay, and we succeeded both times. That's the story. According to the Washington Post report published last October, Pentagon officials, unhappy with the withdrawal appealed to Trump's interest in oil to convince him not to withdraw troops. Blah blah blah, they can just keep going. So that they were like

lying to Trump about the number of troops there. So here you have Trump wanting to do certain kinds of

military and foreign policy and generals in his orbit. And the other thing was Trump appointed all these generals to all these different positions, is chief of Staff and Defense secretary and this and that and the other, and a bunch of them were conniving snakes who and you know, it's hard to be, you know, too critical of James Mattis, this incredibly distinguished military career, But the reality is he was not really obeying what Trump told him to do.

In various instances, he was kind of not really doing what Trump was asking him. And then he eventually resigned after Trump and after Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria. So for Trump to say he wants jenerals who are loyal to him, I don't think in a vacuum, I don't think that that's some awful thing. I think it's actually far more problematic that you had generals sort of blowing the president off or like lying to the administration

about the troop numbers. I think that's actually a far more problematic thing than Donald Trump saying, Hey, I want generals who are loyal to me. Why would Donald Trump want generals loyal to him? Allow me to direct you to this little document that this legal document that has something to say about this question of the president and the level of control he's supposed to influence over the military.

It's called the United States Constitution. Specifically Article two. Article two is about the powers of the President of the executive branch. Allow me to direct your attention to Article two, Section two. The President shall be Commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States. That's it. That's he's the commander in chief. He directs the Army and the Navy.

He directs the military, He is in charge of it, he oversees it, not the Secretary of Defense, not anyone that Constitutionally, it doesn't legally, it doesn't even make sense for anyone else to have the authority to not do what the President tells him with regards to the military, short of something that's flat out illegal. And so I could see Trump in a moment of peaque venting that

Jesus for Hitler as generals did what they told him. Now, it's an unsavory comparison, but you know, we're talking about some private conversation. Look how many times have I, maybe in private conversation, said something stupid that I wouldn't necessarily want printed in a newspaper. Here's Trump. Did he actually say it or not? It seems highly disputable. But even the general principle of what he's saying I don't think

is wrong. Yes, his generals should be loyal to him if he is president of the United States, because that's the oath to obey the Constitution, the oath that officers of the United States swear to follow the Constitution, and right there in Article two, Section two, one of those provisions of the Constitution, is the commander in chief of the military being the president, the president being the one who directs the military. So I find this whole controversy

to be ridiculous. Now, is it crazy to think Trump might have said it? Again, I don't think it's actually that crazy to think he might have said it. I'm guessing he would have had it with the proviso of I mean, you know, not to the extent of me, like ordering them to do the Holocaust and them doing a Holocaust or something, but the general principle being I would like my generals to do what I tell them to do and not lie to me, which clearly happened

several times during Trump's first term. And it's not like we saw in the Biden administration, where a lot of these guys kept their jobs. But like Mark Milly and a lot of people in the Joint chiefs who have shown themselves to be incompetent boobs in various other respects. So I and a lot of these guys who are far more interested in DEEI and various kinds of liberal buzzwords that probably were helpful to them in their ascent to the top of the military heap than actual fighting

and killing. So I guess I just find the whole. The whole sort of mini controversy, which I think this was their grand October surprise. Was some quote that some poorly sourced quote from several years ago that John Kelly's kind of saying Trump one time said, I wish I had generals as loyal to me as Hitler as Hitler's generals were, which, by the way, I'm not sure if Hitler's generals were that loyal to him even, I mean pretty sure didn't one of them try to assassinate him anyway?

The guy with one eye, the guy with one eye that Tom Cruise played in that one movie. Yeah, I think he tried to assassinate him anyway. That this is the Great October Surprise, which I feel like is not

having any effects whatsoever. Everyone knows Trump says crazy things, nobody cares at this point, Like I think my wife and I have been laughing, We're like, gosh, after ten years or whatever, the Trump's been in kind of public life, like they've just run out of things to throw at him when it comes to like October Surprise esque allegations or whatever. I mean, I feel like they've got nothing left.

There's nothing, no more bullets left in the chamber. But I think it does shed light on, you know, how is this Trump and Minute stration going to be staffed when it comes to the military and diplomatic side. On the diplomatic side, Trump got impeached the first time, I think on incredibly specious grounds. Why In large part, I mean, the underlying reason for it was a bunch of people within the foreign policy and defense blob who were terrified at the idea that Trump might not give the Ukrainians

all the weaponry that they thought they needed. And they were so angry and upset about that that people leaked confidential discussions Donald Trump had with foreign leaders, with no one having the consideration of, like, hey, don't you think it's a bad thing for the United States in general if we have executive branch officials leaking private conversations that the President of the United States is having with the

president of another foreign country. I mean the guy Alexander Vinman, the guy who started the whole and then turned into just a flat out left wing activist who started the whole Trump Ukraine impeachment thing. The thing in retrospect, I

think the whole thing was a joke. I think Trump was actually one hundred percent within his rights to say to the President of Ukraine, Hey, maybe you should investigate this Hunter Biden thing, because clearly Hunter is guilty as sin or at the very least, there is a lot of smoke there and seems highly likely that there's fire.

I just find so. Basically, though, the Trump administration the first time around was staffed by just an absolute snake pit of people who in the foreign policy side and the deploy almacy saw the State Department people who did not want to do the things Trump wanted to do. Appointing John Bolton was a disastrously dumb idea on Trump's part. Bolton never saw a country he didn't want to invade,

and Trump didn't want to invade any countries. That's why Bolton only lasted a short time and then immediately got fired.

I hope the Trump administration the next time around, if he wins, which is still I feel like it's about a fifty to fifty proposition, if he wins, that he can staff this his administration with competent people who actually like agree with his foreign policy, which for the most part, I looking at the end result, I think I really liked what happened in foreign policy during the Trump years for the most part. So I find again I find this argument, Oh, Trump once general's loyal to him like

Hitler's generals. I find that whole. I think it's a silly story. Oh, it comes out just happens to come out the October, you know, two weeks before the election or whatever. Not buying it. And also from a constitutional point of view, I think his generals should be loyal to him up to the point of doing something that's flat out illegal. Yes, they should be loyal to him and should do what he tells them to do when

we return. How this idea of the executive branch being completely run by the president is not actually the fascist threat to democracy that people think it is. Next on the John Girardi Show, beyond this little mini panic that liberals are trying, this is just you know, the October surprise, the attempt to throw spaghetti against the wall and see

if it sticks. With this alleged again, this alleged claim that Trump one time in private said I wish my generals were as loyal to me as Hitler's generals, which is both I think historically kind of laughable. I think one of Hitler's generals tried to kill him. And also, like stepping back from the unsavoriness of any comparison with Hitler, is not necessarily a wrong thing for a president to

want generals to be loyal to him. I mean, short of doing something illegal, generals are supposed to obey the president of the United States. He's the commander in chief, not the generals. Okay, the general's job is to do what the commander in chief tells them to do. Again, short of something illegal, generals should be loyal to the president in that respect. Now, loyalty to like an individual

personality is maybe not really the spirit of it. But again, we're talking about some quote poorly sourced in private from several years ago that John Kelly kind of remembers Trump saying, without the full context of exactly what did Trump mean blah blah blah blah blah. Also in the context of a bunch of generals around Trump who blew him off

and kind of flat out did disobey him. There were stories after the fact that basically diplomatic officials and military folks were lying to the president about troop counts in Syria. It's this like, yeah, like there were demonstrated instances where Trump's generals or the generals that he appointed to different posts, like the Secretary Defense bl blah blah blah, blew him

off and didn't do what he wanted. This leads me to there have been a number of stories about how terrifying it is that Trump wants to institute various kinds of plans to give him greater latitude to fire executive

branch officials. Executive branch employees basically to reschedule if you will, the federal employees who work within the various executive branch departments, the EPA, the FDA, the DOJ, this that, but all the alphabet soup of all the federal executives, all the different federal agencies that are under the authority of the executive branch. Basically at the moment, it's sort of divided into career employees and political appointees. So let's take the

Department of Health and Human Services. A lot of people who work at the Department of Health and Human Services are career employees. They stay in their job and it doesn't necessarily depend on who is president. They oversee certain things. They help with drafting regulations, They do this, that and the other. Then there are the political appointees. These are the people at the top who oversee things, who take guidance from the administration ultimately from the president, and set policy.

The political appointees come and go with different presidential administrations. If a Republican administration comes in, all the Democrats leave. Democrat administration comes in, all the Republican appointees leave. Republicans have noted, particularly in the first Trump term, how a lot of the career employees, who are protected in various ways under federal law and federal regulations from being fired.

They can't be fired at will necessarily. They can only be fired for cause that a lot of the career employees of the federal government, well, I mean, this is an undisputed fact that the vast majority of them are huge liberals, and that their presence can hinder stemy thwart Republican priorities. I think one of the greatest examples of this was when during COVID Congress passed the legislation for

the PPP loans. They specifically drafted the language to exclude planned parenthood and other big national abortion provider chains from getting PPP loans. They specifically wrote it so that Planned Parenthood wouldn't get the money, and Planned Parenthood still got all the money. Why because the Small Business Administration approved

all their applications. So Trump has floated this idea of basically putting these career employees in a different kind of schedule of federal employees to allow the executive branch leadership, i e. The President to fire more of them and replace them with people who will do what he wants more effectively. This has been deemed by the left to be fascism. This is a horror, this is a threat

to democracy. No, the president is elected through a part democratic part, sort of giving representation to states part, you know, the electoral college system. It's not pure democracy, but it is a democratic system. The president is elected in a democratic system. The career employees of the federal government should do what he says, because in the constitution, who has the executive power of the United States. It's not the president sharing it with career employees of the federal government.

It's just the president. All of the career employees of the federal government are using the president's delegated power. Every single one of them are in an org chart that has at the very top the president. If you're some career flunky working for the Department of hhs', you're under this manager, who's under this manager, who's under this under secretary, this under super subsecretary, who's under this secretary, wh's under the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who is under

the president. That is true of every single executive branch employee. If you're not doing, or if you are slow rolling, or if you are subtly thwarting what the president i e. Your boss wants done, then you shouldn't work there. End of story. Just as a question of kind of constitutional order, the president should have the ability to ensure that all of his employees, exercising his authority, are doing what he wants. Executive branch officials thwarting the president, that is the threat

to democracy. The president was elected, not this flunky. So should Trump's generals be loyal to him? They absolutely should, up to the point of doing something illegal. Trump's generals should do what he tells them. Should career officials of the federal government be loyal to the president, to President Trump if he gets elected, yes, they should up to the point of doing something illegal. They should do what

he tells them, end of story. And if they don't do what he tells them, I think Trump should one hundred percent of the authority to fire them. As a question of constitutional order, I think Joe Biden should have the ability to fire. If there's some right wing nut job working at HHS who's actively thwarting President Biden, makes sense for President Biden to be able to fire him.

Obviously I would love that person. But as a question of constitutional order, the president should direct the executive branch when we return. When we return Kamala Harris the anti Catholic slash other threats to the Democratic Order. Next on the John Girardi Show, jd Vance had an op ed published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I think this is a pretty strategic thing on his slash the Trump administration's part to go after Kamala Harris for what they view

as an anti Catholic prejudice. I think it's accurate, and I could discuss it on my own without jd Vance's. I mean, I've been following Kamala Harris's career with great interest, and particularly her sort of various forays into anti Catholic activity. There have been some particularly bizarre recent things. Gretchen Whitmer, who's a top Harris surrogate. It's hard to sort of blame Harris for this. I'm pretty sure she was not

aware this was happening. Whitmer did this bizarre skit with a left wing podcaster who was interviewing her, where Whittmer looked like she was basically she fed this other woman a looked like a tortilla chip or something, but did it in a way that looked very similar to a

priest giving someone holy communion. It was this weird, kind of bizarre skit, which Whitmer says, Oh, I didn't at all intend for that to be offensive to Catholic, sort to mark the Catholic, but Catholic bishops were like, well, that was super weird. Harris then skipped this thing called the Al Smith Dinner, which I've never particularly liked myself.

But the Al Smith Dinner is this big New York City charitable dinner raise money for different kinds of Catholic aid causes, and traditionally in presidential election years, the two main presidential candidates show up and tell jokes and Harris just didn't go. It's sort of the first time in I think decades that one of the two major presidential party candidates did not go. She sent in some incredibly cringey video and that was it. You know, is that

a super anti Catholic thing. I don't know. I think it was more of a campaign thing of Kamala Harris is not very personable and is not good at telling jokes and is not funny and it's not relatable. And her team basically was like, Eh, let's just skip that, but let's get into her genuine record towards Catholics, because I I think given the states that are at play

in the election, what are the battleground states? Pennsylvania huge Catholic population, Wisconsin and Michigan huge Catholic populations, Georgia not so much, North Carolina not so much, Arizona, Nevada large Catholic populations. So and it's no coincidence that JD Vance this op ed is published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. So they need to win Pennsylvany. Pennsylvania is clearly the

most important state in the whole election. If you win Pennsylvania, I think odds are you're going to win the presidency, Vance writes. As a US Senator from California, Miss Harris racked up a record of bigotry towards Catholics and Catholic teachings. In twenty eighteen, she attacked Brian Buscher, a federal District Court judicial nominee, over his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a one hundred and forty two year old Catholic paternal

organization dedicated to public service. This was now just commentary. This was a hilarious thing. So this is when Harris was a senator. She's on the Senate Judiciary Committee. One of the big things the Judiciary Committee does is it vets the judges that the President appoints to the various different federal judicial openings throughout the country. So whether that's a federal district court judge who's you know, trying cases, a federal appellate court judge, so a judge who hears

appeals from the district court. So someone on the first Circuit, the second Circuit, the third Circuit in California were under the Ninth Circuit Court of the of Appeals, or someone being appointed to the Supreme Court, the Judiciary committee's job is to vet them. Harris was on the Judiciary Committee, and this one judge was nominated to be a federal District Court judge. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus, and the Knights of Columbus, as was saying,

it's a Catholic fraternal organization. The Knights of Columbus don't believe anything other than what the Catholic Church believes, and she was trying to say that, Oh, here it is. His membership of the Knight in the Knights of Columbus is very controversial and questionable. The Knights of Columbus have supported lots of political things. Well, no, there's nothing that. There is nothing the Knights of Columbus believe other than

what the Catholic Church believes. That's it. That's the limit of what they think and believe, of the ideology whatever of the Knights of Columbus. It's not like, you know, it's not like I don't know some group that has Oh they have a couple of renegade teachings they believe outside of normal Catholic belief. In practice, no, their belief is entirely delineated as the beliefs of the Catholic Church.

That's it. If you're going to say someone can't be a judge because they're in the Knights of Columbus, you're effectively saying they can't be a judge because they're Catholic, which is against the rules. The rules in this thing called the Constitution. We're not supposed to do religious tests for office. As Vance says, any first year law student would tell you that her line of questioning qualifies as

an unconstitutional religious test for public office. That same year, Miss Harris condemned the Masterpiece Cake Shop Supreme Court decision, in effect arguing that the government should be able to compel Catholics or believers of any faith to perform services that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, or indeed, anyone's conscientious belief She disagrees with. Miss Harris's legislative record as

a Senator was similarly antagonistic towards Catholics. She was an early co sponsor of the Equality Act, a bill that would render the Constitution's protections for religious liberty effectively null

and void. Among many potential consequences, this legislation would demand that Catholic church's host same sex weddings, require Catholic schools in all federally funded education institutions to allow men to compete in women's sports and share women's restroom and locker room facilities, and strip faith based charities of their tax exempt status. In twenty nineteen, Miss Harris also introduced the equally misnamed Do No Harm Act, which would force Catholic

hospitals to perform abortions and even transgender surgeries. If this bill were to become law, Catholic doctors and medical professionals who refused to perform late term abortions or subject miners to dangerous life altering surgeries could lose their license in face federal discrimination lawsuits. It gets worse. In twenty sixteen, a whistleblower in California provided evidence that Planned Parenthood was

illegally trafficking organs and tissue from aborted babies. Miss Harris, then the Attorney General of California, ordered a raid on the home of the whistleblower to seize the evidence. In the White House, Miss Harris has been an integral part

of the most anti Catholic administration in living memory. Ironic given President Joe Biden's Catholic faith last year, multiple FBI field offices were tied to a coordinated effort to target traditional Catholics as potent shall quote, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists. Despite this apparent clear cut instance of anti Catholic prejudice, a Biden Heron's Department of Justice declared that

there was no malicious intent behind the memo. Then there's the case of Mark Howck, a Catholic pro life activist father of seven, who had his homes swarmed by more than a dozen heavily armed FBI agents in a twenty twenty two dawn raid that terrorized his wife and young children. Houck's crime shoving an aggressive, expltive hurling pro abortion activist away from his young son, charges which a jury unanimously

acquitted him of. But while the Biden Harris DOJ wanted to throw Mark Howck in jail for more than a decade, they recommended no jail time for an unhinged pro abortion activist who attacked a church employee, smashed windows, and defaced

religious statues in Washington. It's an absurd double standard. While this administration has been busy targeting suburban Catholic dads, it has essentially ignored the nearly three hundred attacks on Catholic churches since the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision in twenty twenty two, and he keeps on going.

I mean, the I think the biggest thing was in a recent interview, you know, well, you know, we'll say this to the next break, but Harris staking out basically a position that is more extreme when it comes to religious institutions and the provision of abortion, more extreme than basically any position you could possibly have. That is next

on the John Girardi Show. So Harris the other day has this interview where they're talking about abortion, and she's, oh, abortion's going, you know, blah blah, blah, blah blah, doing her whole spiel, and the interviewer asks her, you know, are there any points where you would maybe moderate, where you know, you'd work together with Republicans or try to

get something done, like religious exemptions and things like that. Now, religious exemptions, first of all, I object to the question the idea that religious exemptions are a thing that Kamala Harris would compromise on. Religious exemptions are kind of like required by the Constitution, not forcing someone to violate their

deeply held religious beliefs. That the norm, the baseline political norm in this country is to respect the religious exemption of say a Catholic hospital not to do abortions, of an individual healthcare provider who is Christian, to not do abortions all right. Obviously, Catholic hospitals are sort of the most prominent, the most common religious hospitals in the country. About one fifth of all hospitals in America are run by the Catholic Church. But there's also I mean there

are There's a Ventis Health. There's a lot of different religious run healthcare systems throughout this country, and tons of doctors who, for ethical reasons, religious reasons, just don't want to do abortions. And Harris says, I don't see why we should compromise on a fundamental right of a woman to do what she wants with her body, which means one of two things. Either Kamala Harris is an idiot

distinctly possible who doesn't realize exactly what she's saying. Is she actually saying, yes, I want to force every Catholic hospital to perform abortions. Yes, I want to force every doctor to do abortions, even if they conscientiously object to it, Is that actually what she's so she's either stupid and just trying to do the most pro abortion sounding thing she could say, because I mean, that's an extent to which even I don't think President I don't even think

President Biden's going to that extent. Is she saying that and just being stupid and not understanding the impact of her words and just trying to dance in the way that her donors want her to dance. That's the other thing about abortion stuff. The big pushers of abortion in the Democratic Party is the donor class. The super elite donors like Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos's ex wife who gave

like Planned Parenthood one hundred gazillion dollars. They're the ones who really want abortion, and that's what really pushes Democrat politicians to the super hardcore pro abortion stances. It's a donor driven thing, and Harris is more a creature of the donor class than anybody before. I genuinely think, like not that Obama or Hillary Biden like ignored the donors, but there was some sense to which they were their own person like Obama had ideas independent of the donor class.

Biden had thoughts independent of the donor class. Maybe doesn't have as many thoughts these days. Hillary had, and his thoughts were never that sharp. Hillary had thoughts independent of the donor class. Harris has none. She is Her whole career is as this avatar for the donor class, propped up by pushed by the donors. As you can see by her clearly not quite ready for prime time performance as the Democratic nominee. The donor class wants all this

pro abortion stuff. If she knows what she's saying, she's staking out the most insane, conscious violative position on abortion humanly possible. That'll do it for John Gerardy show. See you next time on Power Talk