{"id":5327,"date":"2026-08-25T21:40:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5327"},"modified":"2026-08-25T21:40:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:40:35","slug":"paid-for-in-blood-senior-military-officers-alarmed-at-trump-firings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5327","title":{"rendered":"‘Paid for in blood’: Senior military officers alarmed at Trump firings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump has been repeatedly criticized for creating a Defense Department that repeatedly purges top military leaders. Now a new report reveals that, as a result of these firings, top senior officials worry that Americans will pay with their blood.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA series of firings and feuds initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left the Army essentially rudderless as it struggles to deal with the threat posed by cheap, deadly drones and missiles that have pounded U.S. bases in the Middle East,\u201d reported The New York Times’ Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Adam Entous on Tuesday. \u201cThe Army has not had a chief of staff, the service\u2019s top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

They added that under Hegseth, the Pentagon \u201chas forced out at least three senior officers who had been viewed as potential successors to General George.\u201d Additionally the Army Secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, \u201cis also expected to leave the administration in the next few months and has already moved out of the large family house that he was renting in Fort Myer, outside Washington, officials said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing about the scope of Hegseth\u2019s purges, they added that \u201cbeyond General George, Mr. Hegseth has fired or forced out a half-dozen senior officers \u2014 a generation of the Army\u2019s most combat-hardened leaders \u2014 thinning the service\u2019s top ranks for the next several years, officials said.\u201d<\/p>\n

They continued, \u201cGeneral George struggled to forge a relationship with Mr. Hegseth, who arrived at the Pentagon with deep suspicions of the Army\u2019s senior leadership rooted in his own experience, Army officials said. After deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Hegseth was forced to leave the National Guard for tattoos that were deemed extremist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth reportedly complained in his book that \u201cthe military I loved, I fought for, I revered, spit me out.\u201d<\/p>\n

To start filling the gap in military leadership, Trump and Hegseth have nominated \u201cGen. Christopher LaNeve, Mr. Hegseth\u2019s senior military aide, to fill the job as the Army\u2019s second in command, overseeing the service\u2019s daily operations.\u201d Currently LaNeve \u201cis serving as both the vice chief of staff and the acting chief, both of which are demanding four-star positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reporters observed that \u201cwithout strong leadership, critics said that the Army risks falling behind adversaries like Russia and China, who are making rapid advances in incorporating artificial intelligence and new drones into their formations.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaNeve himself implicitly acknowledged that the military needs to return to learning basics as well as modernizing, with words that could be construed as applying as much to the recent military purges as to the actions of previous administrations.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEvery shortcut in training and lapse in discipline will be paid for in blood,\u201d LaNeve wrote.<\/p>\n

In July, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Q. Brown Jr. joined former Navy reservist and NSA staffer and attorney Andrew Kragie to warn, \u201cWhen presidents use the armed forces for more politically contentious missions, such as addressing domestic crime in cities, the work of the military becomes more fraught. Resorting to a military solution rather than fixing the underlying incapacity or dysfunction in civilian institutions diverts the military from focusing on its primary combat mission.”<\/p>\n

In June, legal scholars Michael N. Schmitt and Ryan Goodman similarly raised the alarm that the Trump purges were depriving the military of invaluable expertise on a mass scale.<\/p>\n

“Over 900 years of military experience has been lost due to Pete Hegseth’s purge of 25 senior military officers\u2026.\u201d wrote Ryan Goodman, an NYU law professor. \u201cI highly recommend this important essay by Mike Schmitt just published.”<\/p>\n

In his Just Security essay, Schmitt (also a law professor at New York University) elaborated on the basic point that Goodman raised.<\/p>\n

“Since January 2025,” Schmitt wrote, “the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. Among them are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Army, and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who concurrently serves as director of the National Security Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cMost recently, Gen. Christopher Donahue, one of the most decorated and combat-experienced officers of his generation, has been forced out as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, in his NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) role, as commander of Allied Land Command. Public explanations have been sparse and, to the extent they have been offered, largely general.”<\/p>\n

Read more Insider exposes the single Trump mindset driving global chaos<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump has been repeatedly criticized for creating a Defense Department that repeatedly purges top military leaders. Now a new report reveals that, as a result of these firings, top senior officials worry that Americans will pay with their blood.\u201cA series of firings and feuds initiat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n'Paid for in blood': Senior military officers alarmed at Trump firings - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5327\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Paid for in blood': Senior military officers alarmed at Trump firings - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Donald Trump has been repeatedly criticized for creating a Defense Department that repeatedly purges top military leaders. 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