Military

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 …

Just in from the Department of Justice: According to court documents, from December 1996 to January 2011, Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, 45, a former member of the U.S. Army, allegedly conspired with agents of a Russian intelligence service. During that time, Debbins periodically visited Russia and met with Russian intelligence agents. In 1997, Debbins was assigned a code name by …

ABC News reports: Pentagon officials working on Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s cost-cutting review of the department have proposed slashing military health care by $2.2 billion, a reduction that some defense officials say could effectively gut the Pentagon’s health care system during a nationwide pandemic. The proposed cut to the military health system over the next five years is part of …

Jim Sciutto reports at CNN: Amid escalating tensions with both North Korea and Iran, President Donald Trump’s advisers hesitated to give him military options fearing the President might accidentally take the US to war and deliberately informed their counterparts in both countries that they did not know what the President would do next, multiple former administration officials tell me. These …

Law & Crime reports: The United States Navy SEALs announced Sunday that they are investigating the use of a “Colin Kaepernick” stand-in for a K-9 demonstration at the Navy SEAL Museum in St. Lucie County, Florida. Footage caught attention earlier that day from the Twitter account of filmmaker Billy Corben. He linked to the Instagram account “twogunterry.” The video is …

Politico reports: A new mandatory Pentagon training course aimed at preventing leaks refers to protesters and journalists as “adversaries” in a fictional scenario designed to teach Defense Department personnel how to better protect sensitive information. The new course was recently launched as part of Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s effort to improve “operational security,” or OPSEC, and clamp down on leaks. …