This is Lois Beckett, in The Guardian’s California office, taking over this evening’s live politics coverage.
“I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!” a retired four-star general reportedly exclaimed to another retired commander last week on the parade field at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
That’s what retired Admiral William H. McRaven, who led the United States Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014, writes in a new op-ed in the New York Times that calls Trump a threat to American democracy.
At two high-profile events for American military personnel last week, McRaven writes, “there was an underlying current of frustration, humiliation, anger and fear that echoed across the sidelines. The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within.”
“If this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it,” McRaven argues.
McRaven is known as the architect of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. He has publicly attacked the president before, in a 2018 open letter to the president that ran in the Washington Post, criticizing his decision to revoke the clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, who has criticized Trump’s behavior as “treasonous” and called him “wholly in the pocket of Putin.”
“Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” McRaven wrote of Trump last year. “If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken.”
