A new report in The Atlantic supplies colourful insight into why Donald Trump’s presidency is bounding along so chaotically. It turns out that the man with his finger on the button lacks a lot of basic information. I’m not referring to his ignorance of macroeconomics, military strategy or history; these shortcomings have long been obvious. More problematic, he doesn’t notice vital aspects of what’s going on around him.
This obliviousness has rarely been more glaring than when the US Army’s top civilian, Daniel Driscoll, met Trump in the Oval Office last week to explain why he was resigning from the post he’d held for a year and a half. Driscoll had clashed repeatedly with the Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, especially over Hegseth’s moves to fire or block the promotion of more than 80 senior officers, most for their adoption of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) policies, many for their promotion of new ideas (such as recognising the new dominance of drone warfare over, say, tank manoeuvres), at least half because (and pretty much only because) they were black or female.
Shorts
No surprises here. Driscoll – who, like Hegseth, is an Ivy League law school graduate and Army veteran with political ambitions beyond this administration – had been expected to resign for some time. The stunner was that, according to The Atlantic, Trump expressed surprise at Driscoll’s comments. It seems the President – who also serves as the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces – had no idea that Hegseth had dismissed or derailed the careers of so many senior officers or that the Army was now soaked in turmoil as a consequence. (In April, Hegseth also fired the Army’s much-beloved top general and hasn’t nominated a replacement since.)
