More than 200 retired, high-ranking military officers released an open letter on Monday endorsing former President Donald Trump for a second term, largely aligning with his promises to restore safety and peace to both America and the global order. In a copy of the letter obtained by The Federalist, the consortium of retired admirals and generals calls this cycle the “most important election since our Nation was founded.”
The group Flag Officers 4 America officers open their endorsement letter: “The undersigned retired Generals and Admirals are endorsing Donald J. Trump for president in 2024 because he is a proven leader who will secure our border, repulse our adversaries, revitalize our economy and keep America safe and strong.” The letter appears to be an effort to blunt an endorsement by dozens of former U.S. intelligence community officials who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in recent days.
“Today our Nation has never been more divided as the cultural war, supported by the Democratic party, divides our citizens into conflicting groups,” the flag officers’ letter continues. “Recent evidence is the widespread riots on university campuses with students and faculty supporting terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, blatantly flying their flags on American soil and burning our U.S. national flag.” Signers include Maj. General Patrick H. Brady, Maj. General James E. Livingston, and Vice Admiral Howard B. Thorsen who frame the election as a choice between recommitting the country to its “underlying traditional values which have made America great” or continuing toward “the deadly abyss of socialism and authoritarian cultural marxism.”
“[U]nvetted illegals from 160 countries… plus thousands of criminals and terrorists… place America at great risk,” the officers write, noting that only Trump has said he is committed to employing the full weight of the federal government toward deportation efforts. “Future terrorist attacks of some size on U.S. soil are a near certainty,” the authors add, echoing recent warnings from others in the know.
Their diagnosis of America’s security risks concur with those of the Council on Foreign Relations and the bipartisan congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy, with the latter stating bluntly today’s environment contains “the most serious and the most challenging threats since the end of World War II.” The commission further warned, “The United States could in short order be drawn into a war across multiple theaters with peer and near-peer adversaries, and it could lose.”
The letter states that some of the most pressing national security threats of a generation, including the release of up to 600,000 migrants with violent backgrounds and the domestic surveillance activities of around 100,000 Chinese assets, should raise significant alarm. The Council on Foreign Relations in May suggested that the $35 trillion national debt is crowding out the government’s ability to adequately fund its military. “For the government itself, this means interest on the debt slicing more and more into the funds available for national spending priorities.”
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