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President Donald Trump mocked retired Admiral William H. McRaven as a "supporter of Hillary Clinton" and "Obama supporter" and suggested that the 39, former head of the US Special Operations Command should have apprehended Osama bin Laden more quickly.
The comments, which the President made in an interview with Chris Wallace in "Fox News Sunday," represent the latest point of tension between Trump and a group of retired general officers who have publicly criticized the commander-in-chief for its management of national affairs. security and military issues.
McRaven, a retired Navy SEAL, oversaw the 2011 operation that killed bin Laden at a complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan. After Trump had revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan this summer, McRaven wrote an article in the Washington Post in which he defends Brennan as a man of integrity unparalleled and asked the president to also revoke his authorization by solidarity. McRaven also criticized Trump more broadly.
"Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you were president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs," McRaven wrote. "A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his organization.A good leader shows the example to follow.A good leader always puts the well-being of others before himself."
"However, your leadership has shown very few of these qualities," added McRaven. "Thanks to your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, we have been humiliated on the world stage and, even worse, we have divided as a nation."
The comment was a rare public reprimand by a former senior officer, most of whom tend to remain silent on political issues after retiring, and incessant appeals to McRaven to run for office.
On Sunday, about three months later, Trump fought back against the retired admiral when Wallace spoke about it during the interview.
"Bill McRaven, retired admiral, Navy SEAL, 37, former chief of US special operations, who led the operations, commanded the operations that killed Saddam Hussein and killed Osama bin Laden, said your feeling was greatest threat to democracy in his life, "said Wallace, while Trump was interrupting him to call the former commander-in-chief a" Hillary Clinton fan ".
Trump then accused McRaven of not finding Bin Laden fast enough.
"It would not have been nice if we had Osama bin Laden much earlier than that, would not it be nice?" the president said. "You know, living – think about this – living in Pakistan, admirably in Pakistan, in what I suppose to be considered a handsome mansion, I do not know, I've seen more enjoyable." But living in Pakistan just to side of the military academy, everyone in Pakistan knew that he was there. "
McRaven did not immediately respond to requests for comments on Sunday.
This is not the first time that the tension between Trump and retired army officers is spreading in public.
Earlier this month, Martin Dempsey, former president of the Joint Staff, joined with other retired officers to participate in the deployment of thousands of Trump soldiers to the United States. Mexican border week of mid-term elections. Dempsey called the operation a show of force against the caravans of Central American migrants traveling from the north to the US border, a "useless deployment of soldiers and oversized marines".
During the 2016 campaign, Trump attacked retired Marine Corps general John Allen for his support of Clinton, describing the former commander of the NATO-led Afghanistan mission as "a bankrupt general".
McRaven was chancellor of the University of Texas after leaving the military, but resigned this year for health reasons. He suffers from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of slow-growing blood cancer, which he was diagnosed in 2010 while he was in Afghanistan.
