The story of the dismissal of Captain Brett Crozier from his command of a US aircraft carrier has only grown more troubling over the last day. To review events so far: In late March, following previous failed attempts to get appropriate action from his superiors regarding a coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Roosevelt, Crozier sent a broader communication asking that he be allowed to send the bulk of his crew ashore. This message was then leaked to the media (by whom is not known at this point). A few days later (this past weekend), Crozier was fired from his post for having sent the plea.
The optics were shocking – a naval officer punished for trying to protect the sailors under his command? – and the reasons provided seemed dubious at best. Explaining his decision to dismiss Captain Crozier, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly stated that Crozier had broken the chain of command and had cracked under pressure. Modly’s action was an override of normal Navy protocols for handling concerns about a ship captain, and he essentially indicated to a reporter this weekend that he made this move at the suggestion of President Trump (though he described it as taking action before the president could insert himself into the matter).
But today, events took a still darker turn. In a remarkable in-person speech to the sailors of the USS Roosevelt (the vessel is currently docked in Guam), Modly escalated the list of accusations against Crozier. Addressing the captain’s decision to send a communication to his superiors, Modly stated that, “If he didn't think, in my opinion, that this information wasn't going to get out to the public, in this day and information age that we live in, then he was either A, too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this," Modly said, continuing, "The alternative is that he did this on purpose." Modly added that this was a “betrayal of trust, with me, with his chain of command.”
The big story here is the action of a Trump administration official to demonize a naval captain for trying to protect his crew from the coronavirus. Remember, Crozier has already been relieved from command, even though there hasn’t yet been an investigation of his actions yet (which would be far more typical in such a situation). So why has the acting Secretary of the Navy flown to Guam to talk directly to the crew of the ship whose captain he’s just defenestrated, not to reassure them that the Navy cares about their health and safety, but to ramp up the charges against Crozier, including the accusation of “betrayal,” which could subject Crozier to a court martial?
I think Paul Waldman gets it exactly right when he suggests that Crozier has been targeted so severely because he’s helped disrupt Donald Trump’s claim that he’s got the coronavirus under control. After all, last month the Secretary of Defense had communicated to military commanders that they’d need to clear their coronavirus protection policies with him first – a policy presented as ensuring consistency across the US government, but which was clearly intended to spare the president from embarrassment should a general or admiral acknowledge the danger of the coronavirus at a time the president was still declaring it to be a hoax.
What has specifically escalated this whole situation in the eyes of the White House, and which this CNN article smartly notes, is that not only did Crozier’s plea for help leak, but that videos of his subsequent departure from the ship went viral – videos that show hundreds or even thousands of his sailors cheering for him, in acknowledgment of his efforts to save his crew. I think it is this spectacle that has most unnerved the president and his cronies, to the point that Trump lashed out at him personally at a news conference this weekend. The idea that anyone other than the president might be cheered is an affront to his sense of being at the center of the universe; the fact that Crozier was cheered for doing what Trump has failed at – to defend his charges against the coronavirus – makes the adulation of Crozier totally unacceptable. What most Americans saw as a heartfelt display of loyalty and gratitude, the president and his gang saw as an enormous middle finger aimed at Donald Trump. Any expressions of loyalty and gratitude, when not aimed at the president, are deemed to be treason and betrayal.
The fear and displeasure evoked by all those cheering sailors not only explains the need to kick Captain Crozier while he’s down, but also Modly’s otherwise inexplicable decision to take the sailors themselves to task (in person, no less!) for their support of their captain. “Think about that when you cheer the man off the ship who exposed you to that,” he said in his speech today. “I understand you love the guy. It's good that you love him. But you're not required to love him.” By “exposed you to that,” Modly appears to have been referring to the publicity that this whole story has garnered – but why the crew should be upset about the outside world discovering how the Navy failed to protect the health of its sailors doesn’t really make sense outside of the Trump propaganda bubble. The crew cheered their captain because he was attempting to protect them; Modly’s attempt to browbeat them and to expect them to share his own indignation isn’t just bizarre, it’s positively Trumpian in its non-self-aware belligerence.
Modly has suggested that American security was compromised by adversaries learning of the illness aboard the ship, but this sounds like an excuse for a cover-up. The American people very much have a right to know when our nation’s military is being let down by its admirals and its civilian leadership. Modly might not like it, but the US Navy is not a private fiefdom to be run for the greater glory of the president.
I’m seeing a lot of commentary that Modly is not long for his acting secretary-hood, but that seems naïve. Modly channeled his inner Trump in his ugly remarks today, likely in an attempt to ingratiate himself with his boss. Why on earth should the president be displeased with what he said?