The Wild Reed: Brent Molnar on the Silence of the Generals

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Brent Molnar on the Silence of the Generals

Fort Bragg, June 10, 2025: Lee Greenwood blares, Marines snap selfies, and the commander-in-chief lumbers onstage to trash California, mock the press, and pledge to re-rename Army bases after Confederate traitors. The soldiers behind him cheer on cue, their top brass staring straight ahead like mannequins in dress blues – an honor guard for revisionist history.

Trump’s first target is the Fourth Estate. He points to the press pen, sneers “fake news,” and the crowd obligingly boos. In uniform, on federal property, active-duty troops are coaxed into partisan theater – exactly what George Washington warned against when he said the military must remain above faction. The generals? Silent, medals glittering.

Then comes the resurrection of Robert E. Lee. Trump vows to “restore proud Southern names” to bases Congress stripped in 2023. The line detonates applause from the bleachers – and not a single star-studded shoulder shrugs in protest. Evidently, the Army’s new HOO-ah is a nostalgic rebel yell.

He pivots to immigration doom-scrolling, calling foreign asylum-seekers “animals,” Europe a “chaos lab,” and 2024 “the election of a president who loves you” – as if he isn’t already serving term two. Soldiers laugh, reporters wince, and brass polishes their silence into a mirror.

Next, the California beat-down: Los Angeles is “a trash heap,” its governor “an incompetent fool,” its mayor “a socialist menace.” Trump promises to “liberate L.A.” the way he “won” World War I – never mind he just mangled the alliances onstage like a high-schooler who skipped history class. Cheers again. Commanders again mute.

Flag talk follows: anyone who burns Old Glory should face one year minimum behind bars. The troops roar. But the oath they swore – to defend the Constitution – protects flag burners, too. Apparently authoritarian applause now outranks the First Amendment in the chain of command.

He rebrands Face the Nation as Deface the Nation, because in grievance-culture grammar, every institution begging for accountability is graffiti on his gilded image. The brass? Busy practicing statuesque restraint – eyes front, mouths shut.

To cap the spectacle, he recounts a purely imaginary victory in L.A.: protesters “with bricks and hammers” crushed by “unstoppable, overwhelming force.” Reality check: the only bricks were in his rhetorical wall. But why fact-check when uniformed validation is cheaper than ammo?

Offstage, California’s $3.9-trillion economy – fourth largest on Earth – keeps the nation’s lights on, subsidizing red-state coffers Trump claims to champion. If California’s “trash heap” vanished tomorrow, Fort Bragg would be raffling Humvees on eBay. Funny how fiscal dependency never makes the teleprompter.

The louder Trump barks, the quieter his generals become. Their silence isn’t professionalism; it’s complicity. When the commander orders cheers for treason and mockery for the Constitution, every unchallenged syllable erodes the very oath draped across their ribbons. Speak up, generals – or history will note you stood at attention while the Republic was heckled into the ground.