John Bolton: Firings of Top Military Leaders a ‘Big Mistake’ and Politicizing the Military Under Trump

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
Dean: “I first just want to get your reaction to these firings of the top military leaders and what you think that does.”
BOLTON: “Well, if we understand the reasons correctly, and I think we do, it‘s a big mistake. You know, we‘ve one of our great national successes has been civilian control over the military. It‘s really protected us from a lot of abuses that many other democratic societies have faced. But the corollary to civilian control over the military is not to politicize the military. And I think these firings were because of DEI and association with the Biden Administration. Don‘t get me wrong. I throw out the whole superstructure of DEI as a way of looking at how to hire people. But in the military, you have to assume that particularly high-ranking officers will. And if they don‘t obey orders, then you have a different circumstance. But here they‘re assuming that because CQ Brown and others obeyed orders in the Biden Administration that they will disobey orders to the contrary in the Trump Administration, which I believe certainly at a minimum, is not yet proven. So by dismissing them simply because they followed orders from Trump‘s predecessor, that is, introducing a political factor with no cause for firing these people that will cause enormous problems throughout the military morale and recruitment that we can‘t even calculate at this point.”