More former military leaders are blasting President Donald Trump for promoting the use of military personnel to quell ongoing anti-police brutality protests taking place nationwide.
People have been protesting the death of George Floyd, a black man, who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Some of the demonstrations have turned violent and destructive, prompting the president to call for a “law and order” approach of stopping the riots. He has pushed the idea of possibly using military personnel to step in and help local law enforcement.
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen called President Donald Trump a “dictator-in-chief” for suggesting the use of military personnel during a Friday morning interview on CNN.
Cohen, who also served as a U.S. senator, told CNN host Jim Sciutto that Trump is putting the country on the path to a dictatorship.
“I remember a professor of mine saying liberty without order is a mess, but order without liberty is a menace,” Cohen said. “What I see taking place is the White House engaging in a very menacing activity and leading us down the trail toward a dictatorship where it is only the law of rule, not the rule of law.”
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey also ripped Trump for the way he has dealt with Floyd protesters.
"The idea that the president would take charge of the situation using the military was troubling to me," Dempsey told NPR Thursday.
"The idea that the military would be called in to dominate and to suppress what, for the most part, were peaceful protests — admittedly, where some had opportunistically turned them violent — and that the military would somehow come in and calm that situation was very dangerous to me,” he said.
Before Dempsey shared his thoughts, Trump was criticized by former defense secretary James Mattis.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis wrote in a statement to The Atlantic published Wednesday. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."
Defense secretary during the Clinton administration, William Perry, told Politico that the U.S. military "was never intended to be used against American citizens, and it was never intended to be used for partisan political purposes."
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