old salt wrote: ↑Fri Jul 05, 2019 12:52 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:55 pmSimply inappropriate. There’s a good reason why the service heads took a pass.
Yes there was. Long planned leave.
WP Pentagon reporter on PBS Newshour :
The Pentagon ...have said very little this week ...they've been told to let the WH do the talking on this one ...they wanted the element of surprise in the show ...it was all last minute ...over time, it sounds like the Pentagon was on board, especially with the air show side of it... people in uniform are often hesitant to step out in a way that looks partisan. There's a long tradition in the military of trying to avoid politics.
{re. the absence of the Service Chiefs} I wondered if someone was silently protesting. ...It's more logistics. July is a common time to have vacation. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will be there, ... & looking to get a senior member from each service front & center.
Video clip w/transcript.
This was not a long lead time event. I read earlier in Defense One that some of the Chiefs had long planned for leave this week. It's hard for Service Chiefs to sched leave for family vacations, With July 4th on a Thurs, it was essentially a 3 day work week, with liberal leave. Given all the media scrutiny & second guessing, if 1 or 2 of the Chiefs were going to be on leave, the rest might have passed up the event to squelch rumors of division or dissent & to not scuttle their fellow Chief(s) long planned leave. The SecDef, Chairman & then a Flag rep from each service was plenty of brass in attendance.
MSM frustrated with lack of leaking, so they make up a narrative.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 04, 2019 7:55 pmOne truly weird moment was when he claimed that the Army had taken the airports during the Revolutionary War and/or War of 1812. Huh?
I hope we see the script that was loaded in the teleprompter. He apparently got lost & winged it.
There was a time warp between Yorktown, 1781 & Ft McHenry, 1814, when the Army rammed the ramparts & took the airports.
The Money Shot = #1 of 20 --
Blue Angels starburst maneuver over the Lincoln Memorial-
So, your explanation is that some of the Chiefs had long planned leave (makes sense), so none showed up...to show solidarity??
Why would some coming have scuttled their fellow Chiefs' leave? Because Trump would have ordered them to cancel their family leaves?
Yikes.
I agree it wasn't a long lead event.
It was horribly planned and poorly executed, expensive and for what real benefit?
New York got it right.
So did thousands of other events all over the country.
Now, the script was indeed 'patriotic', with little present day politics...though a little bit snuck in to those with ears.
And flyovers are always cool.
But militarizing the 4th, and politicians wrapping themselves in the aura of the military, especially on the 4th, very inappropriate.
Pretty sure no airports existed in 1812- Ft. McHenry, not 1814 either.
But yeah, it's likely that script made some sort of actual sense and Trump garbled it somehow. There was a point where it wasn't clear that he was actually reading the words...sounded more gobbledygook, so maybe he got lost and his mind was trying to make sense of it.