This week, President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at a historic gathering of US military generals at Quantico.
CBS Military Analyst and retired U.S. Army Colonel Jeff McCausland joined WWL to share his thoughts on the event.
“The word unprecedented does not describe this," McCausland says. "I'm using the word historical because I've only been doing this military stuff for about 50 years.”
McCausland points out how the political rally seemed to oppose the Trump administration's priority of eliminating needless expenses.
“For an administration... trying to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse to spend millions (bringing in) — and let's face it, this is millions of dollars — between 800 senior officers, plus their sergeant majors, so that's 1,600 people, roughly, from all around the world to one place. And then bring the Secretary of Defense and the President there, imagine the security problem just to begin with, basically, for the Secretary of Defense to talk about appearances and for the President to give a political rally… It's historic, if not unusual.”
McCauseland explains that, were he still in the military, and at that meeting, he'd be exiting with more worries than when he came in.
“First of all, the military and those general officers, each of whom has an average of 30 or more years of service, all of them mobile tours in combat, several wounded, many have lost friends, all have lost soldiers in combat. And they're getting dressed down by a guy who avoided the draft five times and a guy who has spent a couple years in the National Guard. That's got to be dispiriting."
“Number two,” McCausland continues, “It's basically a political rally saying, hey, we want you to sign up to this particular political agenda. And they were threatened, if you don't want to sign this agenda, you can immediately resign. You can walk away."
McCausland says it wouldn't surprise him to see resignations from some top military officials following the event. One area of concern, specifically, McCausland explains, is Trump's rhetoric around activating the US military on American Soil. Trump used the refrain "Invasion from within" during his speech to indicate the activation of the US military on American soil.
“Talking about how the military now is going to be more involved in U.S. Cities on the border, talking about going into Chicago, talking about using cities as training grounds for warfare," McCausland says.
"And this would really be contrary to that civil-military ethos, which is that officers swear an oath to the Constitution. They firmly believe," McCausland says, "they are servants of the American people, not any individual president. They defend the American people. They don't attack them in their home.”