Trump’s War on the Military:

Firing Competence, Installing Bootlickers 

And just like that, Donald Trump is back on his banana republic nonsense, this time by firing General C.Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because—wait for it—he wasn’t loyal enough to Trump’s personal delusions of grandeur. Naturally, the right-wing outrage machine is in full gear, pretending this is a bold stand against “DEI poison” instead of the obvious authoritarian move it is. 

Because let’s be clear: This isn’t about military readiness, national security, or even some fantasy about Trump purging the “woke” from our armed forces. This is about one thing: Trump’s obsessive need to bend every institution to his will, loyalty tests be damned. 

Of course, the right-wing propaganda factory is busy rewriting reality, portraying Brown—an experienced, decorated Air Force general—as some kind of leftist diversity hire who spent his days forcing soldiers to read Robin DiAngelo instead of preparing for combat. It’s a laughably stupid narrative, but stupidity has never stopped the MAGA brigade before. And now, with their cult leader back in power, they’re fully committed to gutting the military’s leadership and replacing it with people who will follow orders without question—even when those orders have nothing to do with national defense. 

Trump and his enablers don’t want a professional military; they want a personal army—a politicized force that sees him as their commander in something far more sinister than a legal sense. They’re not mad that Brown was ineffective; they’re mad that he wouldn’t play ball in their game of authoritarian cosplay. 

So while Fox News and their favorite rage-bait influencers are busy crowing about how this is a win for the “anti-woke” agenda, the rest of us should be paying attention to what’s really happening here: Trump is reshaping the military into something that serves his interests, not the country’s. And that is the real threat to national security—not some imaginary epidemic of pronouns in the Pentagon. 

America, wake up: The actual “destructive force” isn’t C.Q. Brown. It’s the guy who’s trying to turn the military into his personal MAGA militia. 

Enter Eric Early: The Dollar Store Despot of MAGA-Land 

Eric Early, a third-rate attorney with first-rate delusions of grandeur, is the political equivalent of a gas station hot dog—cheap, artificial, and suspiciously overcooked. A perennial loser in California politics, he keeps throwing his hat into the ring, only to watch it boomerang back and slap him in his sunburned face. Whether it’s running for Congress, Attorney General, or the U.S. Senate, Early’s entire career is a monument to unearned confidence and unshakable mediocrity. 

A rabid Trump toady with the charisma of a deflating air mattress, Early spends his days fear-mongering about “radical leftists” while peddling the same reheated culture war nonsense that plays well in dive bar Facebook groups but flops harder than a beached sea lion in California elections. His legal background—a mix of ambulance-chasing and Fox News audition tapes—provides little more than a flimsy excuse for his never-ending crusade against democracy, diversity, and anything resembling progress. 

This is a man who thinks being loud is the same as being right, whose entire brand is built on grievance politics and performative outrage. If hypocrisy were a renewable energy source, Eric Early could power Los Angeles for a decade. His Twitter feed reads like a boomer’s chain email come to life, and his policy ideas—if you can call them that—seem cribbed from the angriest guy at a homeowners’ association meeting. 

At the end of the day, Eric Early is just another dime-a-dozen MAGA grifter, desperately clawing for relevance in a state that keeps rejecting him. But don’t worry—he’ll be back. Like a bad sequel no one asked for, he’ll keep running, keep losing, and keep embarrassing himself in new and exciting ways. 

The following is his exercise in fear-mongering, a letter written to the Senate in opposition the initial appointment of Brown, which he has been recently touting and showing off as a ‘told ya so’ to anyone who will pay attention. 

I am a Republican Candidate for next year’s open US Senate seat in California. I feel compelled to share with you that I would be part of the fight to prevent General Charles “C.Q.” Brown from becoming the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if I were one of your colleagues today. 

While General Brown has commendably served as a combat aviator and in a number of command and other positions in the course of a long military career, his performance in his present role as Air Force Chief of Staff should disqualify him to be our Armed Forces’ top officer. 

For starters, Gen. Brown has failed to correct the sharp decline in the readiness, recruitment and deterrent capabilities of the U.S. Air Force. According to the Heritage Foundation’s authoritative Index of U.S. Military Strength, on his watch, that service has degraded from a rating of “marginal” in 2021 to “weak” in 2022 to “very weak” in 2023. On the basis of such dismal performance alone, General Brown should not become the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). 

 In addition, while General Brown’s background in various theaters and commands gives the appearance of being credentialed for the CJCS role, his embrace of race-based hiring policies and quotas strongly suggests otherwise. After all, such practices are at odds with and inimical to the Department of Defense’s own Merit Promotion Program that requires promotions to be made without regard to race, color, religion or sex. Worse yet, they have contributed to an overall and statistically significant hollowing-out of the Air Force’s lethality during his tenure. 

 Gen. Brown has also supported indoctrinating our troops to believe: America is a “systemically racist” nation; Whites are inevitably supremacists; and Blacks are unavoidably victims. He even espouses comprehensively accommodating “transitioning,” but intact, males sharing sleeping spaces and showers with servicewomen. 

 Predictably, such polices are fracturing our military, driving out patriotic warriors and exacerbating recruiting shortfalls. And these are precisely the sorts of effects sought by our enemies, both foreign and domestic, whose ideology explicitly seeks America’s destruction. Embroiling our Armed Forces in such “Culture Wars” ensures they will be less able to deter, let alone prevail in, actual conflicts. All of this at a time when we are facing the most dangerous enemies our country has ever known. 

 Indeed, the promotion of General CQ Brown can only embolden our greatest geopolitical foe – the Chinese Communist Party. In their private councils, the CCP’s leadership would no doubt welcome General Brown’s confirmation. What better adversary to have than one acting, whether intentionally or even inadvertently, to distract and undermine its own military? 

 Our nation’ s ongoing Culture War is dangerously dividing our citizens. Rather than working to unite Americans, those on the far-left and others who support General Brown’s nomination have embraced a take-no-prisoner strategy that has communities fighting each other over racial, sexual, religious and cultural differences. These manipulated conflicts serve to disorient and demoralize our country and its people. 

 We simply cannot afford to have that happen to our nation’s military, which must remain immunized from such Cultural Marxism. But rather than insulate the Armed Forces from this fratricidal, so-called “woke,” agenda, General Brown has propagated it – and appears determined to do so with renewed energy if promoted. 

 We must have the best of the best at all levels of our military leading our men and women into combat. Merit, and not race or gender, must be the determining factor. America’s servicemen and women, their families, and all the rest of us, require a Joint Chiefs Chairman who will unify and strengthen our military, not erode its essential cohesiveness. Based on his politically charged and divisive statements, directives and policies, General Brown is clearly not the right man for the job. 

 I urge you to oppose General CQ Brown’s confirmation. 

 Sincerely, 

Eric Early 

 Candidate, US Senate (CA) 

Ah yes, another Republican Senate hopeful trying to score cheap political points by droning on about the alleged “woke takeover” of the military. This unhinged screed against General C.Q. Brown reads like a Mad Lib of every right-wing culture war talking point shoved into a single document. If you took a shot every time he invoked “race-based hiring,” “Cultural Marxism,” or “the Chinese Communist Party,” you’d be on the floor before you hit the halfway mark. 

Let’s start with the most obvious problem: Eric Early has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. He rails against General Brown’s leadership as Air Force Chief of Staff, citing a Heritage Foundation report as if that hyper-partisan think tank isn’t in the business of manufacturing convenient narratives for Republican politicians. Maybe Early should ask actual military leaders about Brown’s performance instead of parroting talking points designed for Fox News appearances. 

And then there’s the predictable meltdown over diversity initiatives. Republicans like Early love to pretend that acknowledging systemic inequality somehow translates to “indoctrinating our troops.” In reality, ensuring that our military reflects the diverse nation it serves isn’t weakness—it’s strength. But of course, Early and his ilk believe that any effort to level the playing field is an existential threat to America, as if our enemies are quaking in their boots at the sight of a diverse and inclusive armed forces. Spoiler alert: They’re not. 

The best part? Early accuses Brown of weakening our military, while simultaneously sabotaging our institutions from within. Conservatives have spent years hollowing out recruitment, morale, and effectiveness by turning the military into a propaganda battlefield for their never-ending culture wars. They scream about readiness while gleefully purging experienced officers who don’t pass their ideological purity tests. They cry about politicization while using every leadership appointment as an excuse to grandstand on right-wing media. And they love to frame any discussion of racial or gender equity as “Marxist,” because heaven forbid we acknowledge that the military is made up of actual people from different backgrounds. 

And let’s be honest—this isn’t really about General Brown’s qualifications. It’s about the Republican Party’s obsession with owning the libs at any cost, even if it means weakening the very institutions they claim to defend. Early and his fellow culture warriors don’t actually care about military effectiveness. They care about manufacturing outrage, demonizing diversity, and securing a few more donations from terrified boomers who think the Pentagon is being run by pronoun-policing social justice warriors. 

Here’s the reality: General C.Q. Brown is more qualified to lead the Joint Chiefs than Eric Early is to run a PTA meeting. His long career, combat experience, and leadership have earned him bipartisan respect—at least from those who aren’t trying to score cheap political points. And if the biggest “threat” to the military is some imaginary wave of “wokeism,” then maybe, just maybe, Early and his friends should stop crying about it on Newsmax and let the grown-ups handle national security. 

So while wanna be MAGA politicians who use fear as a campaign strategy,Fox News and an assortment of rage-bait influencers are busy crowing about how this is a win for the “anti-woke” agenda, the rest of us should be paying attention to what’s really happening here: Trump is reshaping the military into something that serves his interests, not the country’s. And that is the real threat to national security—not some imaginary epidemic of pronouns in the Pentagon. 

America, wake up: The actual “destructive force” isn’t C.Q. Brown. It’s the guy who’s trying to turn the military into his personal MAGA militia.