By admin 
A retired three-star U.S. Army commander has accused President Donald Trump of breaking an unwritten rule of military leadership with a combative address to hundreds of America’s top officers, saying the remarks publicly demeaned subordinates and crossed a boundary senior leaders are taught to respect. Former Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, who once led U.S. Army…
A retired three-star U.S. Army commander has accused President Donald Trump of breaking an unwritten rule of military leadership with a combative address to hundreds of America’s top officers, saying the remarks publicly demeaned subordinates and crossed a boundary senior leaders are taught to respect.
Former Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, who once led U.S. Army Europe, said the principle is simple: “You praise in public and you discipline in private.”
He argued Trump’s performance at Marine Corps Base Quantico — delivered to a rare, short-notice assembly of flag officers and their senior enlisted advisers — amounted to a public chastisement designed for the cameras rather than a closed-door session on readiness or strategy.
Trump spoke to roughly 800 generals, admirals and command sergeants major gathered in northern Virginia on September 30, following an earlier speech by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The event, convened by Hegseth and billed as a focus on “warrior ethos,” was unusual for its scale, the short summons and the decision to pair the defense chief’s directives with a presidential appearance.
Senior leaders travel periodically for conferences, but officials and reporters noted that pulling so many global commanders to one place with little advance explanation is rare.
Opening with a nod to the room’s silence, Trump quickly set an edge. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. But, there goes your rank and there goes your future,” he told the assembled officers, drawing nervous laughter.
He had previewed the same posture hours earlier, telling reporters, “If I don’t like somebody, I’m gonna fire them right on the spot.” The remarks drew scrutiny from retired commanders who said trust between civilian leaders and senior officers is foundational and easily damaged by public threats.
Hertling, appearing on television and in posts to social media after the event, said many in the audience would return to their commands and parse what was lawful and executable — and what was not — but that the tone and setting were misjudged.
“Once again I’m reminded, trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets,” he wrote, calling the spectacle embarrassing for professionals who are trained to absorb criticism privately and deliver accountability within their chains of command.
He added that no one in uniform should expect officers to carry out illegal orders, a line he has used repeatedly when asked about directives that would place troops in conflict with their oath.
The Quantico meeting gave Hegseth the first hour to outline an aggressive cultural shift across the services, including reinstating stricter grooming rules and scrapping what he derided as “politically correct” standards.
“Welcome to the War Department,” he began, lauding an administration effort to revive the Pentagon’s pre-1949 name even as legal experts note only Congress can change a cabinet department’s title.
He pledged to enforce professional appearance and fitness for senior leaders — “No more beardos… The era of unprofessional appearance is over” — and promised directives to raise physical benchmarks that would apply identically in combat roles.
Policy materials and subsequent briefings suggested the drive includes applying “the highest male standard” across combat training, a shift critics say could exclude otherwise qualified women from certain roles.
Hegseth has also ordered cuts to general and flag officer billets and has already moved out a number of top commanders this year. He characterized the agenda as restoring lethality and cohesion and eliminating what he called “decay” in standards.
Trump’s turn doubled down on that theme and veered into domestic security, describing an “enemy within” and proposing that cities such as San Francisco and Chicago serve as “training grounds” to harden the force for internal crises — concepts that alarmed civil-military scholars and some retired commanders because U.S. troops are not trained or authorized to conduct routine policing.
In a separate passage, he framed his goal for the armed forces as a “fighting and winning machine” that “will not be politically correct,” language that drew applause from some supporters and unease from officers wary of politicization.
Hertling said those passages were especially troubling, arguing they telegraphed an appetite to blur constitutional lines governing the use of military force at home.
In an interview discussing the Quantico speech, he warned that pushing troops toward civilian law-enforcement roles is “contrary to the Constitution and contrary to our laws,” and he urged vigilance from commanders who may be tasked to interpret such rhetoric against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Posse Comitatus Act and service regulations.
The former three-star — a West Point graduate and tank officer who commanded the 1st Armored Division and later U.S. Army Europe — has emerged as one of the most prominent retired voices on civil-military norms since leaving active duty in 2013.
His critiques often stress leadership fundamentals taught from platoon level upward: leaders set measurable standards, enforce them consistently, and correct behind closed doors to avoid humiliating subordinates or eroding the trust needed for candid advice. That framing underpinned his description of the Quantico event as a breach of the “praise in public, discipline in private” dictum.
The gathering’s choreography also amplified concerns among lawmakers from both parties about politicization of the armed forces. In the run-up to the meeting, senators questioned the cost and purpose of ordering hundreds of four-, three-, two- and one-star officers to a single venue on short notice.
Analysts said the setting — a museum auditorium, television lights, and a pair of highly political speeches — risked presenting the uniformed military as a backdrop for partisan messaging rather than a forum for operational planning.
While presidents have long addressed troops and commanders, they typically avoid overtly political attacks or threats in such settings, reflecting the U.S. tradition of an apolitical military that answers to civilian authority but does not take sides in domestic disputes.
Reporting from the event captured multiple lines that fed those worries. In addition to the “leave the room” warning, Trump told the audience the services under his administration “will not be politically correct,” pledged a massive increase in defense spending and spoke at length about unrelated political topics, including foreign policy boasts and his irritation over international awards.
Hegseth, for his part, used derisive language about “fat generals” and vowed to purge leaders who, in his view, failed to meet his warrior standard. The White House and Pentagon argue the changes are aimed at readiness, recruiting and morale after years of shortfalls and controversy, and say higher standards will improve combat effectiveness.
Trump has moved in recent months to put his stamp on the Pentagon’s culture and leadership. Earlier this year he ousted several top officers — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — in a shake-up that broke precedent by tapping a retired three-star to be the next top military adviser pending Senate confirmation.
The administration has also announced plans to reduce the number of general and flag officers, steps Hegseth says will streamline decision-making and return the services to a war-fighting focus. The unusual Quantico summit was widely seen as a stage to reinforce that pivot directly to the commanders expected to execute it.
Hertling’s intervention placed him alongside a roster of retired officers and defense officials who have criticized both the format and content of the Quantico speeches.
In his telling, the most damaging element was not a specific policy proposal but a leadership approach that publicly threatened subordinates and invited partisan reactions from a uniformed audience.
He said many in the auditorium likely left with checklists of what might be lawful to implement — tightening fitness enforcement, restoring certain grooming standards, clarifying expectations in combat arms — and what clearly would not be, such as employing troops for everyday policing or treating entire categories of service members as presumptively unfit.
The distinction, he suggested, is at the heart of professional military ethics and the oath officers swear to the Constitution. (VT)
The presidency has at times strained civil-military relations by pressing senior officers to align publicly with political messaging, and the Quantico event immediately drew comparisons to earlier episodes in which commanders stood as backdrops for partisan remarks.
But retired commanders emphasized that norms matter most in small moments: a speech that threatens careers from a lectern, a rally-style riff about “training grounds” in American cities, or a department chief deriding the appearance of his own generals on national television.
Hertling’s “praise in public, discipline in private” admonition, he said, was not sentimentality but a guardrail that preserves the candor civilian leaders need from their top brass.
Trump’s allies defend the messages as overdue truth-telling. Hegseth and administration officials say years of “political correctness” and DEI programs dulled combat edge and undermined standards, and that restoring a traditional war-fighting posture — including tougher physical requirements and stricter uniform rules — is essential for deterrence.
Supporters also argue that commanders must hear blunt expectations directly from the top and that public accountability at the summit level can accelerate change across sprawling institutions.
Yet the legal and political boundaries around domestic use of federal forces, and around the apolitical posture of uniformed leaders, remain intact in statute and doctrine, a reality retired officers say should caution against conflating “warrior ethos” talk with a mandate to insert troops into civilian policing.
For Hertling, the takeaway was less about the feasibility of shaving policies or PT tests and more about the signal sent by the commander-in-chief to the nation’s most senior war-fighters. If trust is the coin of the realm in civil-military relations, he suggested, it was spent recklessly at Quantico.
The former general’s insistence that good leaders correct in private echoed across military channels as officers returned to their posts.
Whether the administration’s push results in measurable gains in readiness, or instead deepens a perception that uniforms are being pulled into domestic political battles, will depend on how far commanders are asked to go — and how faithfully they, in turn, hew to the written laws and unwritten rules that have sustained the American profession of arms.