More than 200 retired, high-ranking military officers on Monday released an open letter endorsing former President Donald Trump for a second term, hewing largely to promises by the Republican to return American and the global order to a safer, more peaceful era.
In a copy of the letter obtained by The Federalist, the consortium of retired admirals and generals calls this cycle the “most important election since our Nation was founded,” seeking to blunt the impact of a slate of military endorsements released last week by the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. Dubbing themselves Flag Officers 4 America, the officers open the letter, “The undersigned retired Generals and Admirals are endorsing Donald J. Trump for president in 2024 because he is a proven leader who will secure our border, repulse our adversaries, revitalize our economy and keep America safe and strong.
Today our Nation has never been more divided as the cultural war, supported by the Democratic party, divides our citizens into conflicting groups,” it goes on. “Recent evidence is the widespread riots on university campuses with students and faculty supporting terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, blatantly flying their flags on American soil and burning our U.S. national flag.” Signers include Maj. General Patrick H. Brady, Maj. General James E. Livingston, and Vice Admiral Howard B. Thorsen who frame the election as a choice between recommitting the country to its “underlying traditional values which have made America great” or continuing toward “the deadly abyss of socialism and authoritarian cultural marxism.”
Some of the most pressing national security threats of a generation, including the release of up to 600,000 migrants with violent pasts and the domestic surveillance activities of up to 100,000 Chinese assets, should prompt calls for alarm, the letter states. “[U]nvetted illegals from 160 countries… plus thousands of criminals and terrorists… place America at great risk,” the officers write, concurring that only President Trump is committed to employing the full weight of the federal government toward deportation efforts. “Future terrorist attacks of some size on U.S. soil are a near certainty,” the authors add.
Their diagnosis of America’s security risks concur with those of the Council on Foreign Relations and the bipartisan congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy, with the latter stating bluntly today’s environment contains “the most serious and the most challenging threats since the end of World War II.” The commission warned, “The United States could in short order be drawn into a war across multiple theaters with peer and near-peer adversaries, and it could lose.” The Council on Foreign Relations in May suggested that the $35 trillion national debt is crowding out the government’s ability to adequately fund its military. “For the government itself, this means interest on the debt slicing more and more into the funds available for national spending priorities,” a recent report states.
In his third bid for the White House, President Trump appears to have ingested the lessons of prior campaigns, including the threat posed by former military leaders cool to his America First approach. In 2016, the Clinton campaign conspired with more than 50 officials from the U.S. intelligence community to put forth a false narrative that Trump coordinated with Russian officials. This time around, he is leaning into his connections within the military from his time in the White House while going on the offense, too. Both Trump and running mate J.D. Vance (R-OH) have gone after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over claims of “stolen valor,” demanding the Democratic vice presidential candidate explain why he abandoned a battalion of soldiers during the Iraq War to instead run for Congress touting a military title that had already been rescinde.
