Dem
51
Ties
1
GOP
48
Continuing on the subject of elections, we have an honest question that would be absolutely nuts for any other president: Is the Trump administration trying to lose the veteran vote?
Our first exhibit is the aircraft carrier CVN-81. Construction is supposed to commence on that vessel later this year, which would mean commissioning in roughly 2034. (Yes, it takes a long time to build aircraft carriers.) When the plans for the ship were first announced, in 2021, the Navy said the ship would be known as the USS Doris Miller. Messman Second Class Doris Miller was among the more famous war heroes of World War II. Though he was trained as a cook, he responded valiantly when his ship, the USS West Virginia, was attacked at Pearl Harbor. He helped get numerous wounded sailors to sickbay, then he manned an anti-aircraft gun and shot down somewhere between one and six Japanese planes. Just less than 2 years later, he was killed in action when his ship (by this time, the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay) was sunk by a Japanese torpedo.
This week, CNN learned that somebody (and it appears it was Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao) wants to drop plans to name the ship after Miller, instead putting Miller's name on some other, smaller ship. Part of the reason, apparently, is that Miller was both an enlisted man and Black, and Cao (or someone else) thinks that carriers should only be named after powerful white men. But a bigger part of the reason is that Cao has a much better ship name in mind: The USS Donald J. Trump.
We understand what Cao's motivation is here. He badly wants to be the actual Secretary of the Navy, not the acting secretary, and, like Todd Blanche, he has to engage in major rear-end kissing before it's too late. What we can't understand is why everyone else in the chain of command, including Trump himself, would be so colossally stupid. Yes, we recognize that Trump has infinite ego and zero shame. But if a name can be changed once, it can be changed a second time. There is no way the next Democratic president lets USS Donald J. Trump stand. Perhaps more importantly, if the administration is going to try it anyhow, why not tell Cao to keep a lid on it until after the election? To name any ship, much less an aircraft carrier, after a president who is not only still alive, but is still in office, and who was a draft dodger? That is going to make some voters, including some who have previously voted MAGA, absolutely furious. Not to mention Black voters. Many of them who voted for Trump were already having second thoughts, and this will not help.
And now, a second exhibit, one with a narrower focus. We have noted, a couple of times, that after the situation on the USS Abraham Lincoln became a scandal, Trump was flippant, telling reporters that the long deployment was "no big deal" and that it really should have lasted longer. We don't know if that was serious, or an attempt at a joke, or an attempt at sarcasm. Whatever it was, it was a very impolitic thing to say, as we pointed out when we first wrote about it.
The angle we missed, however, is this: The ship's home port is San Diego, and it's located in the district of Rep. Juan Vargas (D). We checked that at the time, and realized Trump's casual remarks were not going to put a GOP seat at risk (and the district, CA-52, is D+13, so Trump did not torpedo an otherwise viable Republican contender). However, there is another House district where the Abraham Lincoln has put into port, and where they take Navy affairs very seriouly. That district is VA-02, which is home to Norfolk Navy Yard. That district is EVEN, and is currently represented by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R), whose Democratic challenger is Comm. Elaine Luria (ret.). Luria had a 20-year Navy career, and then held this seat before Kiggans sent her packing in 2023. Some Republican operatives think that Trump effectively handed the seat over to the Democrats with his flippant attitude, and you can see why they think that way.
And finally, we'll pass along one more example. The Stars and Stripes is one of the prides of the military establishment; it's been providing actual fair and balanced coverage of world, national and military affairs for 165 years (with a break prior to World War I). Since Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took over the Pentagon, however, he's been gunning for the paper. He canceled the use of wire services like the AP and Reuters, banned the printing of cartoons (long a signature feature) and fired the paper's ombudswoman. This week, publisher Max D. Lederer Jr. decided that he's had enough, and also suspected that he was likely about to be fired himself, so he announced his retirement after nearly 2 decades on the job.
As with Cao and his secretarial dreams, we understand what Hegseth's motivation is here. Whiskey Pete hates an independent press, particularly an outlet that's been covering the Abraham Lincoln fiasco extensively. He also sees liberal boogeymen everywhere, including middle-of-the-road sources like the AP. However, mucking around with an institution like The Stars and Stripes is like mucking around with the Marine Corps Ball or with the layout of Arlington National Cemetery. It's just not done, and the only real impact is going to be to aggravate voters. Again, that includes many pro-military voters who have been supporting the GOP with their votes.
It is almost conspiratorial to raise the question we started with here, and to wonder if the administration somehow wants to aggravate veterans and pro-military voters. We can't really think of what their motivation would be, unless it's something Freudian, like subconscious self-sabotage. But we also struggle to understand how Team Trump could be so foolish and impolitic with one of the third rails of American politics, and just months before an election to boot. (Z)