[ad_1]
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan informed the White House that the US military should not be politicized, following an attempt by President Trump's assistants to obscure the USS John S. McCain from Trump's point of view during a presidential visit to Japan.
"Secretary Shanahan has asked his chief of staff to meet with the White House military office and reaffirm his mandate that the Defense Department will not be politicized," he said. Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, Pentagon spokesman, in a statement, according to the Reuters news agency. . "The Chief of Staff said that he had reinforced this message," said Buccino.
The message amounts to a rare reprimand of the White House by a federal agency, all subordinate to the president. Shanahan has been acting Secretary of Defense since the New Year. Trump has just appointed him to this position on a permanent basis.
The reaffirmation of the independence of the army stems from an incident in which the White House military office asked the 7th Fleet of the US Navy to recover the name of the warship , hosted in Japan, to prevent Trump from seeing it. The directive has never been realized.
Shanahan said that he had talked about the incident with McCain's widow.
Trump and the late senator were fierce rivals. Trump had insulted McCain in the 2016 presidential campaign for being captured in Vietnam and McCain had voted in 2017 to frustrate a Trump-backed effort to reshape Obamacare.
[ad_2]
Source link