In a Fox News interview last month, Donald Trump suggested that election chaos could be handled by the military, “if really necessary.” His remarks, which drew condemnation for politicizing the military, came amid the first presidential election with both post-all-volunteer force and post-9/11 veterans on the ticket: Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, served as a junior enlisted Marine, and Harris’s, Gov. Tim Walz, was a senior enlisted noncommissioned officer in the Army National Guard. “What should have been a positive—that both vice presidential candidates volunteered to serve in the country’s all-volunteer force at a time when most Americans did not—has instead become a potential negative, with partisans on both sides casting aspersions on their service,” Peter D. Feaver wrote in September.
Military leaders have played an outsized role in this campaign, with retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly recently calling Trump, his former boss, an “authoritarian,” and Mark Milley, a retired Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Trump administration, telling journalist Bob Woodward for his new book that Trump is a “fascist to the core.” Milley’s comments have been used in Harris campaign advertising to suggest Trump is “not fit” to serve as commander in chief.
Despite these unusual interjections from top brass, military veterans remain a Republican-leaning group, a recent Pew Research Center survey shows. About 60 percent of registered voters who say they have served in the military or military reserves favor Trump. Six percent of the population overall has served in the military, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, down from 18 percent in 1980.
Read it here: Stop Politicizing the Military
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