The Obama administration urged military officials to remain in uniform for incoming President Trump, according to Joe Biden.
“We encouraged a lot of people to stay in the administration who weren’t really so excited about staying. Generals, particularly. Members of the armed services. Because we knew the man who was coming in had no experience, and to be very blunt about it — it’s not a criticism — we knew that he didn’t expect to win and he had not prepared for what to do if he won,” the former vice president said late Saturday, according to a pool report.
Biden, whose front-runner status for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is being eroded by rivals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, made the comments at a fundraiser in Van Meter, Iowa. After spending the latter part of the week addressing claims that Trump implored Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and investigate Hunter Biden’s ties to an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, Joe Biden told donors the White House was missing “a sense of decency” and talented staff.
Generals and other members of the military are not political appointees and do not have the option of choosing not to serve under a new administration. While the option of resigning or retiring is always open, the U.S. military jealously guards its non-partisan and non-political status, and military appointments are not affected by a new president being elected.
In 2016, Trump and Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton jostled for pre-election endorsements, with Clinton earning the approval of 95 retired generals and admirals to Trump’s 88. Observers noted at the time that only 10% of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 354-member military advisory council chose to publicly back his successor as the party’s standard-bearer, who said on the 2016 campaign trail that he knew “more about ISIS than the generals do.”
After Trump’s surprise win that fall, the then-president-elect initially came under scrutiny for stacking his cabinet with former military brass, including retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis as secretary for defense, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as secretary of homeland security (who went on to served as White House chief of staff), and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his short-lived national security adviser.
Yet, it emerged in the first summer of the Trump administration that Kelly and Mattis had formed a travel pact, where they each agreed not to leave the country at the same time in case they needed to modulate orders from the White House. The report was interpreted by critics to reflect widespread mistrust of the new commander in chief. That interpretation was bolstered later that year by claims former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson once called Trump a “fucking moron” after a high-level meeting at the Pentagon.
While touting his foreign policy credentials, Biden added on Saturday that he was becoming increasingly concerned about Trump’s behavior in the Oval Office.
“The more he thinks he’s likely to lose, the more erratic he becomes and the more things he does that are worrisome,” he told donors, whom he promised would not receive Trump-like tax benefits from a Biden administration should he win the primary and general election next year. “We have at least another year and a half of this man, and it’s going to be, we’ve just got to, as my mother would say, keep our fingers crossed, because the truth of the matter is I’m very worried about how erratic he’s become and the things he does and the things he says.”
