Commander-in-chief vs. his military
When it comes to civilmilitary relations in America, Sunday began as inauspiciously as it would end.
At daybreak, Fox News aired an interview with recently convicted Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher. Posing questions to Gallagher was his biggest proponent at the network, “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth. Next to Gallagher sat Tyler Merritt, another vocal supporter and the founder of military-themed tshirt company Nine Line Apparel. Why was Merritt there for the interview? We’ll get to that.
Gallagher, as most everyone now knows, is the SEAL accused by his own team members of horrible crimes — including shooting civilians in Iraq, among them children. Gallagher himself bragged about knifing and killing what the Los Angeles Times later described as a wounded “adolescent detainee.” Several SEALs even testified they had sabotaged Gallagher’s weapon at one point “because they felt he was targeting civilians.”
Now, having escaped most of the charges through a botched prosecution, a last-minute story change by a witness and help from Hegseth and President Trump, Gallagher is waging a media campaign to keep his SEAL trident as he retires.
That’s why he was on Fox. The Sunday interview is short but packed with more grift and insubordination than one normally finds in a single sevenminute period, including Gallagher attacking his own chain of command, saying that Rear Adm. Collin Green of Naval Special Warfare Command, the SEAL commander, was “letting the ego get the best of him.”
This is important because Gallagher is still on active duty.
He then accused Navy Secretary Richard Spencer of “meddling in my case” before describing Green as “showing complete insubordination” before Trump. Of course, Gallagher could be thrown out of the Navy for any one of these things. For all his faults, it seems, Gallagher is also without a sense of irony.
About that time, Merritt, the Nine Line Apparel CEO, started discussing his brand and how he wanted to use it to help Gallagher. I noticed Merritt was wearing a Nine Line shirt. Then I saw Gallagher was wearing the same Nine Line shirt, only a different color. Then it hit me: This was product placement.
And the day was only getting started. By late afternoon, reports emerged that Defense Secretary Mark Esper had asked for Spencer’s resignation. Shortly afterward, Spencer’s “acknowledgment of termination” letter was published. It was very direct.
Spencer, the Navy secretary, roasted the president, writing, “unfortunately it has become apparent that … I no longer share the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me, in regards to the key principle of good order and discipline. I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took.”
Spencer is saying Trump is trashing the very idea of good order and discipline in the military. He is right, of course.
By early evening, Trump had taken to Twitter to address these events. He gave Gallagher another ringing endorsement and then provided a few reasons why Spencer had been fired.
As I type this, all I can think about is how Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, was smeared last week by Trump supporters as a conspiratorial Jewish spy for Ukraine. Now the president of the United States is going to the mat for a man convicted of posing in a “deer kill” photo with the teenager he had stabbed.
It’s all so un-American and wrong. It goes against everything the U.S. military fights to protect. And yet it’s all so normal now.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer demanded an accused war criminal be subjected to a panel of peers to determine his worthiness as a SEAL — a process necessary for good order and discipline. He’s now out.
Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL convict, went on Fox News and trashed his chain of command while selling a product. He’s still in.
It was an embarrassing day for the military, enabled and encouraged by Trump, and we’re all diminished by it.
Friedman previously served as an Obama administration official and as an Army infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.