Pete Buttigieg slams Donald Trump for calling for general’s execution

MSNBC host Jen Psaki asked out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about Donald Trump’s recent comments calling for the execution of General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Buttigieg went to town on Trump’s longstanding “disrespect” for the military, even calling Trump’s bone spurs fake.

Donald Trump called for the death of Milley last month, calling Milley “a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.”

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“This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump wrote on his Twitter clone, Truth Social. Milley was appointed by Trump.

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“It’s alarming, not surprising,” Psaki said, “but given you’ve served and you’re a longtime public servant, what is your reaction to that?”

“The level of disrespect for the American military, not to mention for the general, is both shocking and not shocking,” Buttigieg responded. “Look, this is part of a lifelong pattern with the former president that, I would argue, was first displayed when he faked a disability in order to avoid having to go to Vietnam and allowed, I assume, some working-class person to go in his place, and has continued ever since.”

Buttigieg was likely referring to what the New York Times once called Trump’s “timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam.” The daughter of the doctor who signed off on Trump’s medical exemption said that her father called it a “favor.”

But Buttigieg didn’t stop there. He brought up how Trump famously attacked the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) because he was captured during the Vietnam War, saying that proves McCain wasn’t a “war hero.”

“Made a name for himself by, you know, basically saying that he did not respect John McCain because he was a war hero,” Buttigieg said. “And, you know, look, a lot of this is obviously to get attention, and you hesitate to reward that.”

“On the other hand, we do, in fact, have some boundaries that matter in this country, and one of them is that our regard for the military and our respect for the military is nonpartisan, it’s nonpolitical, and it’s universal, and that is especially important because that is part of how the military does their job. I knew every time that I put on that uniform, every time I went to work, every time I got into a vehicle, every time I went outside the wire, that I was with men and women who were serving and supporting each other and responsive to a chain of command that was not about politics, that did not break down because of our political differences.”

“This undermines that. It threatens that. And it threatens it at a time when we need those institutions that are still at least somewhat outside of the chaos that the last administration sowed and that some extreme House Republicans are sowing as we speak,” he said, referring to how House Republicans are holding up the military’s funding bill in order to get several extreme measures passed, including one to ban the military’s health care program from paying for gender-affirming care for members of the military and their families.

“We need what the military has to offer by way of nonpartisan stability more than ever,” he concluded. “and I’ll say General Milley has been a class act in how he’s dealt with it.”