Two words: Sean Hannity..
What establishment darlings don't realize is Trump opened the door for bored billionaires to run for the Presidency. Ross Perot was the first, and actually had a chance in '92 before his brain imploded. After seeing Trump do it, billionaires like Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, Cuban, and Oprah are just a few of the names to surface.
And what do these people have in common besides immense wealth? None of them have ever served a day in the military, nor do they have any formal education in military history. If you're going to be CinC, you need to know enough to understand what your generals are telling you...there's a good chance they have their own agenda that may conflict with what's in the best interest of the US.
Here's my example: within a month of being placed in charge of Iraq reconstruction, LTG (ret.) Jay Garner was fired from his job by President Bush. His crime? Garner was quoted as saying his goal was to return Iraq to the Iraqi people as soon as possible, "it's their country."
Cheney didn't like it, Rummy didn't like it, let's face it, the military-industrial complex didn't like it. Would Garner's plan have worked out better? Beats me, but we wouldn't have lost thousands of servicemembers over there.
I'll admit my bias: I came to know LTG Garner when he was a LT Colonel of a sister battalion of my ADA Group in Germany. I was a 1st LT, XO for a support detachment at Todendorf, a German anti-aircraft training base. Whenever I was on site, my job was to shadow the battalion commander, to respond immediately to any requests he might have during their week of training.
During that week, I got to know him pretty well, and it was obvious he was loved and respected by his officers and soldiers. I never asked him, but I'm convinced his after action report kept me out of hot water...lol. I was usually left in charge, as the CO was working through marital issues, and we were 400 miles from home station. It was no big deal, I had a cadre of seasoned NCOs, and the troops did a great job.
When I got back, on my first visit to Group HQ, a senior warrant officer pulled me aside to tell me, "you were making me laugh all summer. There wasn't a week go where I overheard, 'did you hear what NHN did this week?'" I chuckled and told him I did what I had to do. We were 400 miles from home, and our support in Bremerhaven was 200 miles away. My decisions were based on what the situation dictated at the time. The results spoke for themselves, i.e. we received excellent reports from each battalion.
