PRIVATE BONE SPURS SAYS
'He shouldn't be talking that way': Trump rips ousted Navy captain

By Juan Perez Jr., Politico•April 4, 2020

A Navy commander’s written alarms about a coronavirus outbreak aboard his aircraft carrier “looked terrible,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, as he praised military leaders who removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s top officer from his post.

Pentagon officials ousted Capt. Brett Crozier after he wrote a searing letter to Navy leaders notifying them of a spike in cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, among sailors on his carrier. The San Francisco Chronicle, Crozier's hometown newspaper, published the letter Tuesday. Crozier was fired Thursday, as his former ship idled in Guam.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly described Crozier’s firing this week as the "hardest thing that I've ever had to do."

Trump said he fully supported Crozier's removal, though he said, "I didn't make the decision."

"The letter was a five-page letter from a captain, and the letter was all over the place," Trump said. "That's not appropriate."

“I thought it was terrible, what he did, to write a letter. I mean, this isn't a class on literature. This is a captain of a massive ship that's nuclear powered. And he shouldn't be talking that way in a letter,” Trump said.

DURING HIS DAILY BRIEFING SATURDAY APRIL 4, TRUMP SAID THE LETTER WAS WRITTEN BY A DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVE IMPLYING IT WAS NOT ONLY POLITICAL BUT THE CAPTAIN WAS NOT SMART ENOUGH TO WRITE IT

The president also criticized Crozier for making a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, in the midst of a global outbreak.

"Perhaps you don't do that in the middle of a pandemic," Trump said. "History would say you don't necessarily stop and let your sailors get off."

Defense officials have defended the Roosevelt's port call as reasonable decision to have made back in early February.

"At that time there were only 16 positive cases in Vietnam, and those were well to the north all isolated in Hanoi," Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, said in a March 24 press briefing, calling it "a very risk-informed decision" made by Admiral Philip Davidson, the head of Indo-Pacific Command.

More than 150 Roosevelt crew members have so far tested positive for Covid-19, the Navy said on Saturday. Forty-four percent of the crew has been tested, while more than 1,500 sailors have moved ashore as a smaller crew remains on board to sanitize the ship and keep its essential systems running.

Democrats in the House and Senate are now asking the Pentagon's top watchdog to investigate whether Modly acted improperly. In a letter to acting Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine, 17 Senate Democrats, led by Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, requested a probe of both Crozier’s firing and the carrier’s outbreak.

Modly has stopped short of accusing Crozier of leaking the letter, but faulted the captain for sending it over "non-secure, unclassified email" and copying "a broad array of people," instead of relaying his concerns directly to Modly. The letter contained no classified information.

In the letter, Crozier urged "decisive action" to remove the "majority of personnel" from the carrier.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die," Crozier wrote. "If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our sailors.”

Crozier's letter "unnecessarily" caused panic among the sailors and their families, and raised doubts about the ship's operational capability — concern that could have "emboldened our adversaries to seek advantage," Modly said.

This week, videos circulated online showing the remaining crew of the Roosevelt cheering Crozier as he walked down the gangplank in Guam.

Connor O'Brien contributed to this report.

Sideshow Don: Trump pursues a non-virus agenda

By Nancy Cook,Politico•April 4, 2020


When President Donald Trump exacted revenge Friday night by ousting the chief watchdog for the intelligence community, it was just one more instance of the president’s addiction to sideshows -- in this case, closing out a personal vendetta in the middle of a global pandemic that has already claimed more than 8,000 American lives.

White House officials and Trump advisers privately cast the firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, as a move the president has plotted since the Senate acquitted him in February on two articles of impeachment.

But to Democrats and Trump skeptics, Atkinson’s Friday-night defenestration offered another example of the myriad ways this president is re-shaping the federal government during this crisis – both to pursue long-held policy goals and to purge internal critics.

“Almost all of our government systems are under such strain now. We have a heightened danger: first, of fraud and waste in terms of how many millions of dollars are being spent, plus, the potential abuse of power,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

“When you have enhanced government authority like restricting people’s travels, you want to make sure people’s civil liberties are not being violated,” she said. “All of these are dangerous positions for inspector generals to take if they are worried about getting fired.”

Trump showed little inclination on Saturday to disguise his motive for firing Atkinson, whom he said did a “terrible job, absolutely terrible.”

“He took a whistle-blower report which turned out to be a fake report. It was fake. It was totally wrong,” Trump said, though subsequent revelations confirmed the accuracy of the whistleblower’s complaint -- which sparked a months-long drive to impeachment -- in exquisite detail.

“Not a big Trump fan, that I can tell you,” the president added, during a press briefing otherwise devoted to the administration's struggle to combat the outbreak.

In the weeks since the coronavirus first hit the U.S., Trump has continued to pursue pet projects dating back to his 2016 campaign such as rolling back Obama-era regulations, building the border wall and fighting with the Federal Reserve. A new White House personnel director, 29-year-old Johnny McEntee, has meanwhile been hunting for political appointees who have shown any hint of disloyalty to Trump and ordering them transferred or fired.

This week, as the outbreak approached what the president warned could soon reach a “horrific” crescendo of daily deaths, Trump canned Atkinson and tapped a White House aide from the counsel’s office as the new coronavirus relief inspector general, who will oversee the distribution of $500 billion in economic relief to businesses.

Democrats have questioned the independence of a coronavirus inspector general culled from the ranks of the White House staff, even if the lawyer, Brian Miller, also once served as the inspector general of the General Services Administration for 10 years, starting during President George W. Bush’s administration.

Trump’s administration has also weakened government standards for auto emissions since the coronavirus emerged, rolling back a major policy from the Obama-era intended to fight climate change – while continuing to construct the controversial Keystone pipeline. The building of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico has proceeded apace in Arizona, even as millions of Americans stay home to prevent the spread of the virus.

Trump also finally got his way with the Federal Reserve, after months of bashing its chairman in public, as the central bank slashed interest rates in recent weeks to keep the economy afloat as businesses across the country shut down and shed millions of jobs.

Presidents have long used crises to their advantage to enact sweeping political changes, dating back to Woodrow Wilson during the 1918 Spanish flu. Wilson used that pandemic to exert greater authority over the economy by leaning on emergency powers and executive orders to control fuel and food distribution.

Trump is no different in his sentiments as he has pushed policies on building the border wall, cutting taxes and acting tough toward China during an unprecedented public health crisis for which there is no immediate vaccine or cure.

In the case of Atkinson, Trump was removing one of the last of the officials he has angrily blamed for the impeachment “hoax,” with others having departed the government or been removed from their positions in the months since his acquittal

To close Trump allies, Atkinson’s ouster was fully justified -- and could even help repair the president’s broken relationship with the intelligence community, which reportedly warned that the coronavirus outbreak in China could have dire consequences for the United States.

The intelligence community “is supposed to be about serving the needs of the commander-in-chief and chief executive,” said Tom Fitton, the right-leaning president of Judicial Watch. “If you can get people in there who have his confidence, then the intelligence reports and briefings will be more readily accepted."


COVID-19: Dismissed U.S. carrier captain gets hero’s ovation after speaking out on virus fears
A clip showed Brett Crozier walking down the gangplank of the Theodore Roosevelt as crew repeatedly chanted 'Captain Crozier!'
Here is Captain Crozier walking away from his ship while sailors chant his name after he was relieved from duty for blowing the whistle on a coronavirus contamination aboard the USS Roosevelt.
He sacrificed himself and it sounds like everyone knows it. pic.twitter.com/hwiu7Z1MVV— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) April 3, 2020

WASHINGTON — Even as he is hailed as a hero by his crew, the fired commander of a coronavirus-stricken U.S. aircraft carrier is being reassigned while investigators consider whether he should face disciplinary action, acting U.S. Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told Reuters on Friday.

Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of his command of the Theodore Roosevelt on Thursday after a scathing letter in which he called on the Navy for stronger action to halt the spread of the virus aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was leaked to the media.

Modly said in an interview that the letter was shared too widely and leaked before even he could see it.

And that’s how you send out one of the greatest captains you ever had

But the backlash to Modly’s decision to fire Crozier has been intense. In videos posted online, sailors on the Theodore Roosevelt applauded Crozier and hailed him as a hero, out to defend his crew – even at great personal cost to his career.

“And that’s how you send out one of the greatest captains you ever had,” exclaimed one sailor in a video post, amid thunderous applause and cheering for Crozier as he left the carrier and its 5,000 crew members in Guam.

Modly did not suggest that Crozier’s career was over, saying he thought everyone deserved a chance at “redemption.”

“He’ll get reassigned, he’s not thrown out of the Navy,” Modly said.

But Modly said he did not know if Crozier would face disciplinary action, telling Reuters it would be up to a probe that will look into issues surrounding “communications” and the chain of command that led to the incident.

“I’m not going to direct them to do anything (other) than to investigate the facts to the best of their ability. I cannot exercise undue command influence over that investigation,” he said.

Crozier’s firing has become a lightening-rod political issue at a time when the Trump administration is facing intense criticism over its handling of a coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 6,000 people across the country, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

3M says Trump officials have told it to stop sending face masks to Canada

Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, accused the Trump administration of poor judgment and said Modly “shot the messenger.”

The dismissal, two days after the captain’s letter leaked, demonstrated how the coronavirus has challenged all manner of U.S. institutions, even those accustomed to dangerous and complex missions like the military.

His removal could have a chilling effect on others in the Navy seeking to draw attention to difficulties surrounding coronavirus outbreaks at a time when the Pentagon is withholding some detailed data about infections to avoid undermining the perception of U.S. military readiness for a crisis or conflict.

Reuters first reported last week that the U.S. armed forces would start keeping from the public some data about infections within its ranks.

‘DECISIVE ACTION’

In his four-page letter, Crozier, who took command in November, described a bleak situation aboard the carrier as more of his crew began falling ill.

He called for “decisive action”: removing more than 4,000 sailors from the ship and isolating them, and wrote that unless the Navy acted immediately it would be failing to properly safeguard “our most trusted asset – our sailors.”

The letter put the Pentagon on the defensive and alarmed the families of those on the vessel, whose home port is in San Diego.

President Donald Trump, when asked about the captain during a White House news conference on Thursday, disputed the notion that Crozier appeared to have been disciplined for trying to save the lives of sailors.

“I don’t agree with that at all. Not at all. Not even a little bit,” Trump said.

The outbreak aboard the Theodore Roosevelt is just the latest example of the spread of the COVID-19 respiratory virus within the U.S. military. Navy officials say sailors on a number of ships have tested positive, including an amphibious assault vessel in San Diego.

— Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart Editing by Paul Simao