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Extreme Republican supporters have installed themselves in important roles in the Pentagon, following the summary removal of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, at a time when Donald Trump refuses to accept his electoral defeat.
Democrats immediately demanded explanations for last-minute personnel changes and warned that the United States was entering dangerous “uncharted territory” with the reorganization of key national security roles during a presidential transition.
However, defense experts argued that there was little that Trump’s new appointees could do to use their positions to the benefit of the president, given the steadfast refusal of the uniformed military to get involved in domestic politics.
Anthony Tata, a retired Army Brigadier General, novelist and Fox News commentator who called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader,” has taken control of the Pentagon’s policy department following the resignation of Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James. Anderson.
Tata had failed to win Senate confirmation after old tweets surfaced expressing virulent Islamophobic views.
Meanwhile, Kash Patel, a former Republican congressional aide who played a leading role in a campaign to discredit the investigation into Russian election meddling, has been appointed chief of staff to new Defense Secretary Chris Miller.
It was also reported that the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Vice Admiral Joseph Kernan, a retired Navy Seal, resigned on Tuesday and was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a former assistant to Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser to come forward. guilty. to perjury.
The reasons for the post-election personnel changes 10 weeks before the end of Donald Trump’s term were unclear, but they came at a time when the president is refusing to accept electoral defeat.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, fired by tweet on Monday, had refused to allow active duty troops to be deployed to the streets of the United States during the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer.
In his resignation letter, Anderson, the outgoing Pentagon policy chief, also noted his displeasure at the direction the Trump White House was taking after the election.
“Now, as always, our long-term success depends on adherence to the United States Constitution that all public servants swear to support and uphold,” he wrote.
Democrats raised the alarm about the wave of personnel changes at the Pentagon.
“It’s hard to overstate how dangerous high-level turnover in the defense department is during a presidential transition period,” wrote Adam Smith, chairman of the House armed services committee, adding that the development “should alarm everyone. Americans “. .
“If this is the start of a trend – the president fires or expels national security professionals to replace them with people perceived as more loyal to him – then the next 70 days will be precarious at best and downright dangerous at best. worst. “
The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, said the United States had entered “uncharted territory” with Esper’s firing.
“There has never been a time when a senior official like this has been fired during a transitional period from one administration to another,” Warner told MSNBC.
Former military officials and analysts argued that the post-election changes, while highly unusual, were no reason to fear that the Pentagon would become a weapon in Trump’s desperate efforts to cling to power.
“Remember that all the high-ranking military officers are still there,” said Mark Cancian, a retired US Navy colonel and former senior defense official. “Their attitudes remain the same. They have been quite emphatic that the role of the military is very limited in civil unrest. “
Eugene Gholz, former senior Pentagon adviser and author of America’s Defense Policy: The Origins of Security Policy, agreed: “Among military officers of all ranks, it is deeply ingrained that the military it is not used to solve the policy. “
Gholz, now an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, suggested that a possible more prosaic reason for the shakeup might be to fill out the resumes of partisan officials to help smooth out confirmation hearings the next time Republicans are in. The charge.
“There is an opportunity to give someone a credential for a leadership position,” he said. “Now they could at least say, ‘Hey, look, I had this title, if only briefly, in the Trump administration.’
