Pentagon’s ‘Willingness to Kiss the President’s Ass’ Worries Top Lawmaker – By Katie Bo Williams (Defense One) / April 29 2020
‘I am worried about a culture developing,’ says House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., after the latest delay in Navy captain’s fate.
Senior defense officials are making decisions based out of fear they will upset President Donald Trump, exposing a growing culture problem at the Department of Defense, a top Democratic lawmaker and others allege.
The charge comes as a senior Trump administration official at the Pentagon on Wednesday sent back the Navy’s recommendation on the fate of Capt. Brett Crozier, demanding a deeper investigation into his dismissal from command of the coronavirus-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt.
The problem, critics say, is not that Trump is interfering in the chain of command — exerting what’s known as “undue command influence” on decisions that are meant to be adjudicated within a strict military hierarchy — but that military officials are acting based out of fear that he will.
“The president has made it clear as far as he is concerned the single most important attribute that anybody in the federal government can have is a willingness to kiss the president’s ass as often as possible,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee told reporters Wednesday morning. The notion that defense officials may act based on a desire to please the president “undermines your ability to be competent, to make decisions based on what is the right thing to do as opposed to what is going to feed the president’s limitless ego,” he said.
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