According to a number of reports, President-elect Donald Trump will be creating a commission to review leaders in the military with the assumption that many of the top brass will be fired.

Trump will be using a “warrior board” of retired officers, The Hill reported, to review our current crop of three- and four-star officers and will weed out the ones the commission disapproves of.

That’s not all.

Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth—an Army veteran who has been awarded two Bronze Stars, and who served in Iraq and Afghanistan—said in past interviews that it’s necessary to remove “woke” senior military officials who have left the U.S. armed forces in a sorry state.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire [the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and obviously you’ve got to bring in a new secretary of defense, but any general that was involved—general, admiral, whatever—that was involved in any of the DEI woke s—, has got to go,” Hegseth said in an early November interview on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. DEI is shorthand for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Pete Hegseth is ready for day one as Defense Secretary.

'All the woke Generals must be fired immediately.'pic.twitter.com/ai9cqoImj4

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 13, 2024

Trump and Hegseth—the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free” and “Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes”—clearly intend to shake up the military at the top.

The Left, however, isn’t taking it well.

Legacy media is reporting on that development as if it’s some kind of ominous sign that Trump will “politicize” the military. They are even calling it a “purge.”

One left-wing podcaster, Fred Wellman, who includes “democracy advocate” in his X bio, even posted that removing generals is “truly fascist.”

This is truly fascist. The idea is they'll review and fire generals is chilling beyond measure and will damage our military for a generation. You don't make generals overnight. It takes decades. The good ones will leave early instead of waiting to be destroyed. (gift)…

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) November 12, 2024

Ah, yes, civilian control of the military, so fascist.

For a quick history lesson, a president’s removal of generals and other high-ranking military leaders—especially after years of relative “peace”—has often been a significant boon, not a hindrance, to the military.

Peacetime militaries—and I only use that phrase loosely to refer to our own era of near-constant, low-level asymmetrical conflicts—frequently calcify. Leaders who successfully navigate the bureaucratic treadmill to make it to the top ranks in those times are frequently not the best wartime leaders.

Militaries need to be shaken up from time to time.

In the War of 1812, many American military officers were holdovers from the American Revolution. Many had grown old and ineffective. The crucible of war allowed junior commanders like Winfield Scott to emerge as a brilliant young general who would prove instrumental in that war and future conflicts.

In the Civil War, there was a tremendous shake-up of the senior ranks on both sides.

Marginal officers like Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who was almost entirely overlooked at the Virginia Military Institute, proved himself to be one of the most astoundingly gifted military commanders once he had a chance to prove himself in battle.

Abraham Lincoln suffered through far too many mediocrities at the top before finding war winners like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Almost none of the top commanders at the beginning of the war ended up in the same place by the war’s end.

Right now, the United States clearly needs a shake-up at the Pentagon in the worst way.

The world is in turmoil, thanks in no small part to the Biden administration, and we are closer to seeing an actual peer-to-peer conflict than perhaps at any point since World War II.

Yet, many on the Left are hyperventilating about the move. Why? It’s a pretty good sign that they know they’ve made serious inroads into military institutions that are historically traditional and conservative. They don’t want to lose their grip on the military, just as they fear losing control of any other institution they dominate.

The primary issue, beyond typical military calcification, is that our current military leadership appears to be filled with those who have floated to the top amid the general woke-ification of American society and government.

It’s not Trump who will be “politicizing” the military; it’s the military itself that has been politicized. DEI, critical race theory, and other radical ideologies have been force-fed into military institutions, and the Biden administration was only too happy to accelerate that transformation.

They justified DEI by saying that it would create a better, more cohesive military and deepen the pool of recruits. That was the same unproven, bogus argument corporate America made when it went whole hog on “diversity” to the point of climbing aboard the discrimination bandwagon.

But much like the corporate DEI push—which proved a financial liability, rather than a boon—the military DEI advocacy has failed to “succeed” by even the most basic measures.

Nearly every branch of the military now faces a historic recruitment crisis, not to mention a surge in worrisome incidents that suggest a decline in competence and warfighting capability.

To make matters worse—and this is why Trump’s shake-up is almost certainly necessary—the military has failed to hold anyone at the top accountable for notable failures on the international stage.

Those failures have significantly weakened this country’s prestige and credibility abroad.

Most notably was the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. After that failure, nobody at the top got fired. The Biden administration and the military moved on, as if nothing had happened.

If we can’t handle our business against the Taliban, isn’t it worth questioning our ability to counter far greater potential adversaries, such as China?

To underscore the notion that the military has lost all accountability at the top, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin disappeared for nearly a week early this year to take care of a health issue before notifying the president.

If these are the sorts of “invaluable” leaders we may lose if Trump gets his way, it’s hard not to see the president-to-be’s “warrior board” as a net positive. This country should expect a lot better of its military.

This seems like an important moment for a “democratic” correction to a military that has seen a sharp decline in public trust.

Under Biden, the buck stopped nowhere. With Trump, maybe more capable leaders will have a chance to rise to the top and get our military back to focusing on preparedness and defending the American people.

A recent survey by Scott Rasmussen called “Elite 1%,” which was a project of the polling firm Napolitan Institute, reveals that there’s a stark divide between the viewpoints of ruling elites and the rest of the American people on a wide range of questions.

The report, released Friday, not only found wide differences in opinion between the American people and the elites, it also concluded that the gap in ideology and power between the groups may be leading to America’s fraught political situation.

The research categorized Americans into several groups, but focused on the gap between a small subset of elites and the rest of the country, which it defined as “Main Street Americans” who represent “70-75% of the U.S. population” and have none of the attributes of those categorized into the “elite” groups.

“They do NOT have postgraduate degrees, do NOT live in densely populated urban areas, and earn LESS than $150,000 annually” is how the survey defined so-called Main Street Americans.

The findings on the differences between the elites and the rest of America clearly represent an unmistakable political split between institutional insiders versus outsiders.

According to the report, “members of the Elite 1% have very favorable opinions of university professors, lawyers, union leaders, journalists, and members of Congress.”

While the elites leaned strongly toward the Democratic Party, those who were Republicans tended to be much more similar to their partisan counterparts rather than to Main Street Americans.

The elite insiders are typically more socially liberal, less likely to trust citizens to govern themselves, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—tend to be far more trusting in institutions to make the right decisions for the country (without much or any input from people outside their class).

They are also far more comfortable with censorship and regulating the lives of ordinary people.

On social issues, the poll found that there’s an enormous gap between most Americans and the elite on the issue of transgenderism and whether biological males should be allowed to participate in female sports.

“If a biological male identifies as a woman, just 17% of Main Street voters believe that person should be allowed to compete in women’s sports,” the research found. “Among the Elite 1%, 29% believe such athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.”

It’s not just women’s sports on which there’s such a wide gap in opinion on the transgender issue.

“Only 9% of voters favor a regulation being developed by the Biden administration that would make misgendering a co-worker a fireable offense,” the study found. “Seventy-five percent (75%) of voters are opposed.”

The elites are also far more likely to announce their pronouns when introducing themselves.

“Only 10% of voters have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, more than 4 out of 10 have done so. Among the Politically Active Elites, 61% have introduced themselves by expressing their preferred pronouns.”

The elites are suspicious of the Second Amendment and even the First Amendment. Those amendments to the Bill of Rights protect the right to bear arms and the freedom of speech and assembly, respectively.

The polling divide between elites and average Americans on speech is stark:

Voters, by a 59% to 34% margin, believe that letting the government decide what counts as misinformation is more dangerous than the disinformation itself. Among the Elite 1%, the numbers are reversed: by a 57% to 39% margin, they see letting the government decide as the lesser problem.

The elites don’t just want to censor speech, they want to disarm Americans, according to the polling data.

“Seventy-two percent (72%) of the Elite 1% would prefer to live in communities where guns are outlawed,” the report found. “Most voters (51%) take the opposite view and would prefer to live in communities where guns are allowed.”

The research found that 77% of the elites polled want to ban the private ownership of firearms.

On the concept of self-government, elites were far more likely to not only make arbitrary decisions for society, but also to be OK with rigging the system to ensure they stay in power.

“If their campaign team thought they could get away with cheating to win, 7% of voters would want their team to cheat,” the polling found. “Among the Elite 1%, the support for cheating rose to 35%. And, among the Politically Active Elites, 69% would want their team to cheat, rather than accept voters’ decisions.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, the polls found that most elites had no idea that their ideas were so different from those of the mainstream.

The report found that “two-thirds (65%) of the Elite 1%—and 82% of Politically Active Elites—think most voters agree with them on important issues. As has been documented throughout this report, that is far from an accurate assessment.”

The creators of the project noted that while there is nothing wrong with there being large gaps in opinions on serious questions in a society, the Elite 1% “hold tremendous institutional and media power that amplifies their voices at the expense of the American people.”

This power is enhanced, they wrote, by the alliance between the elites “and the unelected managers of the federal government.”

They concluded that the views and overwhelming influence of out-of-touch elites “may be the root cause of the political toxicity in our nation today” and that their “underlying attitudes reflect an implicit rejection of the founding ideal that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed.”

Frankly, it was an embarrassment for American corporate media and gives the lie to the idea that the Harris campaign is all about defending “democracy.”

The interview was exactly what one would expect if you’d followed the Harris campaign at all. It was a series of mostly softball questions, delivered in the friendliest of confines on left-wing MSNBC, conducted by an admiring and sycophantic host, Stephanie Ruhle.

That setup was practically telegraphed ahead of time.

Five days before the interview, Ruhle went on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” and claimed that Harris didn’t have to answer any substantive questions from the media.

“Kamala Harris isn’t running for perfect,” Ruhle heatedly told the New York Times’ Bret Stephens, another guest on the program. “She’s running against [former President Donald Trump]. We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her answer to. And in 2024, unlike 2016, for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”

Ruhle said it was utopian—“nirvana”—to think we the people might get substantive answers from Harris on how she’d govern if elected president.

Really, what a crazy idea that some of us may have that we should live in a free society, where leaders are expected to account for themselves, and the people are the boss.

Basically, Harris isn’t Trump, so anything at all is good enough, right?

How interesting it is that after those comments, the Harris campaign almost immediately announced that they would allow Queen Kamala to come down from on high and grant Ruhle a humble request for an audience.

It was a “coincidence” that didn’t go unnoticed by commentators on X.

hahahaha

Stephanie Ruhle slobbered over Kamala a few days ago, saying she doesn’t have to do interviews because democracy is at stake, and the Harris campaign immediately called her up and says, “You’re our kind of interviewer.”

Incredible. https://t.co/ziPPQEtYzo

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 25, 2024

Stephanie Ruhle goes on Bill Mahar and lick spittles Kamala Harris saying it doesn't matter that she doesn't answer questions or what she believes. Peter Baker calls her "the great" for landing a pretaped interview because of it. https://t.co/LCqF3ioY1w

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2024

It is really bad form for MSNBC to have someone argue that Kamala Harris doesn't need to take questions at all and then have that same person conducting the interview with her. Like if they care about journalistic ethics at all, they should assign a different interviewer. https://t.co/YdPcJXOuvK

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 25, 2024

As for the interview, Harris was asked a few gentle questions about her proposed policies, to which she responded with mostly shallow, bumbling non-answers.

Unsurprisingly, Harris has few ideas about how to cover the $1.7 trillion in spending she’s proposed other than to raise corporate taxes on “billionaires.” Harris additionally had no answer for how she would get this corporate tax hike through with the Republican Party controlling the Senate, if they win back control in November.

So, we just have to assume more borrowing and more inflation. Great stuff.

Here is Harris addressing increasing housing and other costs in society, but her grand idea is just to say, over and over, that our problems must be addressed “holistically.”

NEW: Vice President Kamala Harris says "holistic" three times in a 15-second period.

The VP proudly showed off the word during an interview with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle.

"Looking holistically at the connection between that and housing and looking holistically at the… pic.twitter.com/Z9DMdR97Qj

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 25, 2024

Using “holistically” in this way is akin to using other meaningless corporate-speak buzzwords like “creating synergy” that are intended to sound profound, but mean nothing. I suppose it’s slightly better than saying that the plan for lowering costs is lowering costs.

NEW: Kamala Harris is asked about her plan to lower the cost of living, says she will do that by lowering the cost of necessities.

Remarkable.

Question: What will you do to lower costs?

Answer: Yeah. I first of all, thank you both for being here and yours is a, a story I hear… pic.twitter.com/UQUNCnvesO

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 20, 2024

There was hardly any real substance to the interview at all. Aside from a handful of policy questions, Ruhle and Harris joshed about accusations that Harris never worked at a McDonald’s in her youth as she claimed.

Harris said she made fries, not burgers. But besides laughing and taking potshots at Trump, she didn’t really get into specifics or dispel the notion that the story about her working at a fast-food chain might be made up.

There’s really nothing more to say about these tepid, jovial back-and-forths, but it is notable how similar this was to Harris’ previous CNN interview with host Dana Bash. A handful of “tough” questions received only the lightest of follow-up questions and a large portion of the interview was fluff, wasting the time of viewers.

That would be fine if Harris was generally out on the campaign trail talking to the press and conducting interview after interview like a typical presidential candidate in the age of “democracy.”

It’s wholly unacceptable when one considers that the vice president was dropped into this race in a last-second swap, in which she never even answered to Democratic primary voters. We really are supposed to just accept that the reason to vote for Harris is that she’s not Trump, just as Ruhle said.

When the MSNBC host was later asked about Harris’ vague policy answers, particularly on why the Biden administration ended up keeping many of Trump’s tariffs in place, Ruhle made the excuse that the issue is “complicated.”

It’s totally fine that Harris didn’t give clear and direct answers, because “we are not talking about clear or direct issues,” she said.

Ah, yes, as Sun Tzu doubtlessly once said, the ways of the great leader must be mysterious and opaque to those who must follow.

Since when are members of the press expected to run PR for the politicians they interview?

What we should take from this MSNBC interview is that America’s media don’t want to ask her tough questions in an election. They want to conduct and plan her coronation. They are hardly even interested in getting answers about the way she will promote left-wing policies.

Just being in power is apparently good enough.

In some sense, Harris’ gilded tower campaign is even more disturbing than the Biden basement campaign. Any pretense of illuminating the policy positions of the candidates before the people is gone.

Hard questions won’t be asked. “Joy” and “vibes” will suffice.