General officers love contributing to liberal publications like the New York Times. “We are the media now,” so allow me an unfiltered firsthand response to recent articles:
— Stuart Scheller (@stuartscheller) August 16, 2025
Recently retired General Patrick Donahoe @PatDonahoeArmy posted on X a Times article he captioned, “We…
General officers love contributing to liberal publications like the New York Times. “We are the media now,” so allow me an unfiltered firsthand response to recent articles:
Recently retired General Patrick Donahoe
@PatDonahoeArmy
posted on X a Times article he captioned, “We Used to Think the Military Would Stand Up to Trump. We Were Wrong.”
The article, as usual, bashes President Trump and a conservative view of the world. The article believes America should go back to a time when we celebrated the “inspiration from the generals Mark Milley and James Mattis who resisted the uprooting of established military standards in the first Trump term.”
Mattis and Milley… are there two bigger frauds?
Mattis is famous for failing forward while simultaneously selling himself as a great military strategist. We were all so desperate for a leader, we let him fool US. He was unable to critically think and challenge a system desperately needing reform because he derived his validation from that very system. It mirrored his inability to challenge the counter-insurgency beliefs he spewed for years, despite overwhelming evidence of the strategy’s shortcomings. In my opinion, if he disagrees with a current approach, it only validates the approach. And a simple search engine query of General Mattis and the Times underscores the tactics of generals using liberal publications to attack conservatives.
Meanwhile General Milley led the way for military officers to focus on everything but warfighting. Ivy League degrees, global warming, race rage… check. Planning for a military operation… nah. Since Trump 1, Milley knew he needed to plan the withdrawal from Afghanistan. When the decision was finally made to abandon Bagram and use HKIA airfield, guess what, HKIA wasn’t reinforced… AT ALL. Two years in the works. In other words, zero military anticipation or forethought. And we wonder why the flock of generals created by these two are so weak?
In another recent article titled “A Clash Over a Promotion Puts Hegseth at Odds with His Generals,” The New York Times happily communicates the contempt of Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, who retired on 1 August.
The Times uses Sims to advance its narrative that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a highly educated and decorated Army veteran, is unqualified for his position. The article maintains the Secretary of Defense unfairly denied Sims a promotion to four-star general.
Bullshit. Sims epitomizes the rot in the general officer ranks. Allow me to explain a different perspective.
This past May, the Honorable Hegseth directed a special review panel to re-examine evidence in the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021. I was named the deputy of this task force.
Last month our Special Review Panel met with General Sims and others from the Joint Staff. We asked Sims for help obtaining records relevant to the planning and execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Sims replied that he couldn’t cooperate with the investigation because there weren’t any Democrats on the panel. He also felt the review of the Afghanistan withdrawal was unnecessary because others like him had examined the operation during Biden’s administration. “We weren’t just sitting on our hands,” he said. Meanwhile, pages and pages of basic questions, like who specifically gave the order to abandon Bagram Air Base, remains unanswered.
General Sims, a hand-picked protégé of Milley, actually stated that he couldn’t follow orders from political leadership because he didn’t want the military to appear political. Newsflash to all the general officers who seem to be confused on this issue: You work for political leadership. You work for We The People… not the other way around.
By the way, Secretary Hegseth denied General Sims a fourth star prior to my observance of his disobedience. Why, because the Secretary has great instincts. He can sense the self-serving quiet resistance the Times promotes. So what did Sims do when he retired, he leaked information to the Times that the process was unfair. So f’n disappointing… as always.
If any of this needs validated, ask the Marine two star who was also in the room during this conversation. But remember, unlike Sims’s approach, I’m brave enough to put my name on the comments. No anonymous sources here.
After 20 years of failure abroad and disappointment at home, the American people elected a change-agent president who, in turn, appointed a change-agent Secretary of Defense. Secretary Hegseth put the nation on notice when he announced his plan to restore warfighting at the department, rooting out progressive ideas and prioritizing troops’ preparation to fight and win on the battlefield. If it wasn’t painfully clear before, it is now: general officers’ nepotistic closed system is threatened by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth.
National reporters and pundits love to quote the Constitution when condemning the actions of President Trump. And yet, to paraphrase the Constitution, “we the people” demand transparency, lethality, and meritocracy.
We want a military that is ready to execute its mission. We want military leaders who can perform military operations. I was the most apolitical officer you’ve ever known four years ago, but I was reborn through the liberal cancel culture. In fact, so are all my closest friends.
If we really want an apolitical military, perhaps we make all the general officers, despite their political affiliation, demonstrate warfighting proficiency. Head scratch… if that’s in the works… I wonder who is leading the effort?
We Can’t ALL be wrong.
No interviews. Stop asking. Stop texting. Stop emailing. I hate that I spent my Friday night writing this.
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