President and his defence chief took aim at the ‘fat generals’, but some doubted there was much substance to the swagger on show
This week marked an inflection point in Donald Trump’s relentless politicisation of the US armed forces, as he delivered a partisan – if scattershot – campaign speech to the very room of people he is not supposed to: the commanders of the most powerful military in the world.
For those declaring a five-alarm authoritarian fire in the US, there was plenty of smoke: the anti-woke rhetoric that has become a commonplace of the political right, the threats to summarily dismiss the generals who disagree with him, the transparent pleasure at deploying the military to perform police actions in major US cities.
