Trump grifting the military

Members of the military are supposed to be nonpartisan; they serve the nation, not the President or his party. Yet Trump gave an invective-filled speech to the troops at Fort Bragg, denouncing his political enemies, while a pop-up shop sold Trump campaign merchandise to the troops.

  Diane Ravitch

It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army's 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday.

Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium -- blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom -- amid the president's controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles -- as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.

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Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.

One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers."

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Adding to the spectacle, a pop-up shop operated by 365 Campaign, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based retailer that sells pro-Trump and other conservative-coded memorabilia, was set up on-site with campaign-style merchandise on Army property. Soldiers were seen purchasing clothing and tchotchkes, including "Make America Great Again" chain necklaces to faux credit cards labeled "White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything."

Permitting the sale of overtly partisan merchandise on an Army base likely runs afoul of numerous Defense Department regulations aimed at preserving the military's long-standing commitment to political neutrality. The Army has historically gone to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of partisanship.

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"This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution," one commander at Fort Bragg told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This was shameful. I don't expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term."

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"Believe me, no one needs to be encouraged to boo the media," Sean Parnell, a top Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement to Military.com. "Look no further than this query, which is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ruin the lives of young soldiers."

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Trump is far from the first president to use the troops as a backdrop for a speech that had political notes. But experts say this speech crossed a line and showed the military's ethics can be vulnerable.

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Col. Mary Ricks, a spokesperson for Fort Bragg, said that “the vendor’s presence is under review to determine how it was permitted and to prevent similar occurrences in the future” in a statement provided after this story was first published.

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In 2022, Biden received criticism for delivering a speech outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia that aimed to warn the public about the authoritarian impulses of then-former President Trump and his supporters.

He was flanked by two Marines in dress uniform.

Republicans and reporters immediately jumped on Biden, slamming him for politicizing the military.

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Trump administration official, James Hutton, said Biden "used U.S. Marines as props" and slammed the move as "despicable conduct in attacking more than half of Americans."

Ari Fleischer, a conservative commentator at the time, said the speech was not only "inappropriate" but that the Marine Corps had "some explaining to do" for allowing the speech to occur.

Neither Fleischer, Hutton nor Issa appears to have made any posts criticizing Trump's speech as of publication.

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"The only thing worse than Biden's speech trashing his fellow citizens is wrapping himself in our flag and Marines to do it," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote on social media at the time.

  Military.com

Trump has literally wrapped himself in the flag.

Relatives of the late Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams-Earley anticipated it, but when President Donald Trump announced their parents' names would be stripped from the Virginia base, they were still surprised.

Trump, in front of a crowd of Army soldiers Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said "for a little breaking news" that his administration would be removing the name Fort Gregg-Adams, which was bestowed on the base in 2023, and returning it to Fort Lee, originally named in honor of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded troops of the slave-holding South during the Civil War.

In a follow-up statement from the Army, it became clear that the base would not be explicitly named for the leader of the Confederate troops but instead for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat during the Spanish-American War.

  Military.com

LOL. Bullshit.

Here are Gregg and Adams: