Military

Military.com reports: Retired military officers and veteran entrepreneurs, including seven former service chiefs, recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and nine other four-stars, have endorsed a campaign to make sure military votes are counted among the avalanche of mail-in ballots. The “Count Every Hero” effort, funded by RepresentUs — a “cross-politics” nonprofit focused on …

NBC News reports: More than 200 retired generals and admirals endorsed Joe Biden for president in a letter published Thursday, saying he had the character and judgment to serve as commander-in-chief instead of President Donald Trump, who has failed “to meet challenges large or small.” Some of the officers who signed the letter supporting Biden had retired only in the …

Via press release: In light of recent comments made by President Donald J. Trump referring to military service members and veterans as “losers” and “suckers,” The Lincoln Project’s Veteran and Military Community Coalition announced today the launch of a new ad campaign that is running across the Military Times network and Stars & Stripes. “It’s a complete disgrace that a …

The Washington Post reports: A $1 billion fund Congress gave the Pentagon in March to build up the country’s supplies of medical equipment has instead been mostly funneled to defense contractors and used for making things such as jet engine parts, body armor and dress uniforms. The change illustrates how one taxpayer-backed effort to battle the novel coronavirus, which has …

The Military Times reports: The Pentagon has issued new guidance on religious liberty within the military — following pressure from Republican lawmakers to “prioritize protecting the rights and freedoms of service members” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While critics of the revised regulation say it will encourage military superiors to push their religious beliefs on subordinates and fellow …

Axios reports: Joe Biden, believing President Trump is suddenly vulnerable with military voters, goes up today with an ad called “Knock On The Door,” featuring retired Air force Brigadier General John Douglass, a former casualty notification officer. Douglass — who grew up in Florida, and now splits time between Virginia and Florida — used to deliver the dreaded “knock on …

Gothamist reports: A planned military flyover marking the anniversary of 9/11 was cancelled on Friday morning, after the decision to honor terror victims with a low-flying warplane was widely panned as tasteless and inappropriate. The Department of Defense announced their intention late Thursday to fly an F-18 jet over the Hudson River on Friday afternoon on the 19th anniversary of …

The Independent reports: Donald Trump arrived at a rally in Michigan yesterday to the sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” – a protest song railing against inherited wealth, inequality in military service, and violent hypocrisy on the part of elected leaders. The content of “Fortunate Son” chimes awkwardly with Mr Trump’s biography, railing as it does against inherited wealth, …

The Week reports: After The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg relayed some politically toxic comments President Trump allegedly made about U.S. service members captured or killed in battle — comments confirmed to Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and CNN, in part or whole — it was just a matter of time before the anti-Trump Republicans …

“The president has a habit of disparaging people. He ends up denigrating almost everybody that he comes in contact with whose last name is not Trump.  “I think this is important. This afternoon, the president of the United States said the top people at the Pentagon aren’t in love with him because ‘they want to do nothing but fight wars …

The Air Force Times reports: The U.S. Northern Command based in Colorado Springs has apologized for retweeting a post by President Trump that announced his campaign stop earlier this week in a Pennsylvania city. Northern Command spokeswoman Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze said the tweet was “inadvertently retweeted on the official U.S. Northern Command Twitter account” on Thursday by a new …

Playbook reports: Amid all the furious responses to the Atlantic article alleging that President Donald Trump had called American troops “suckers” and “losers,” one thing leaps out: You didn’t see Republican members of Congress leaping to defend the president’s character. Some of this may be the late summer recess talking. But I’m told telephones and the internet still work outside …

The Associated Press reports: Senior and former military leaders appeared to struggle Friday with how to respond to a report that President Donald Trump disparaged U.S. service members killed in combat as “losers,” as the president attacked the allegations as “fake news.” Retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, sharing the Atlantic article on Twitter, described the military’s cemeteries as “sacred shrines …

The New York Times reports: President Trump wasn’t simply furious that the flags on federal buildings had been lowered to half-staff to honor the late Senator John McCain in August 2018. He actually tried to have them raised, again, on all buildings across the country, according to a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security. In an interview …

Bloomberg News reports: President Donald Trump’s alleged remarks disparaging soldiers who died in combat are “despicable” if accurate and will further damage him politically among service members and their families, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton said. “These comments are despicable. If he made them, they are despicable,” Bolton said in a Bloomberg Radio interview on Friday. “Why should …

Mediaite reports: In a press release, Biden stated that “[i]f the revelations in today’s Atlantic article are true, then they are yet another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the President of the United States.” Biden continued, saying that America has “one truly sacred obligation — to prepare and equip those we send …

The Daily Beast reports: President Trump says he’s ready to “swear on whatever” that he never called slain American service members “losers” or dissed Sen. John McCain. In late-night tweets on Thursday, the president claimed a story by The Atlantic about him mocking U.S. service members killed in combat was nothing more than a plot by “jealous failures” to sabotage …

The Atlantic reports: When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump …

The Military Times reports: The latest Military Times poll shows a continued decline in active-duty service members’ views of President Donald Trump and a slight but significant preference for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming November election among troops surveyed. The results, collected before the political conventions earlier this month, appear to undercut claims from the president that …

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. armed forces will have no role in carrying out the election process or resolving a disputed vote, the top U.S. military officer told Congress in comments released Friday. The comments from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, underscore the extraordinary political environment in America, where the president has declared without …