'Awful precedent': Conservative warns Trump decision could send U.S. careening to 'crisis'

Donald Trump's new picks to lead the military are a disaster waiting to happen, warned conservative columnist Max Boot for The Washington Post — and a clear sign he intends to make his Cabinet bend the knee to his political whims rather than make decisions for the security of the country.

Boot's warning came as experts sound the alarm about Trump's plan to create a "warrior board" that could oust generals on a whim, upending seniority and politicizing the chain of command.

It's a stark difference from his first term, Boot wrote, when Trump gave generals like Jim Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly prominent roles in his administration — and quickly grew enraged when he realized they weren't going to unquestioningly obey his every whim.

"Trump seemed to expect that these military men in his administration would be as loyal to him personally as he imagined German generals were to Adolf Hitler. ... Trump was affronted when these members of his administration disagreed with him on, among other matters, holding a gaudy military parade on Pennsylvania Avenue, abandoning Kurdish allies in Syria and shooting protesters during the 2020 George Floyd protests."

This time around, he is picking different people to lead, like Fox News personality and accused sex pest Pete Hegseth — who rallied right-wing media to support service members convicted of war crimes and who has railed against diversity programs and women serving in combat.

"Giving MAGA ideologues a license to remove senior military officers would set an awful precedent that would endanger the military’s identity as an apolitical, professional fighting force that owes its loyalty not to any individual but to the Constitution," Boot wrote.

"It is, in fact, not hard to imagine Hegseth firing the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, thereby precipitating the biggest crisis in civil-military relations in U.S. history. Trump seem[s] intent on harnessing the military for his own purposes, such as rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants for deportation or repressing potential protests."

Most of Trump's voters weren't voting for the military to be gutted, Boot concluded — "But that is what they are likely to get unless Senate Republicans can muster the courage to protect the armed forces from this looming danger."