Trump claims military leaders fight wars to help companies, but his administration has promoted industry interests

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President Trump’s swipe at military leaders for being beholden to the defense industry came from a commander in chief who has demonstrated a marked preference for appointing defense industry executives to senior Pentagon positions.

Trump said Monday that while soldiers are “in love” with him, “the top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

Senior Pentagon officials with defense industry backgrounds include Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who was Raytheon’s vice president for government relations before Trump first brought him into the Pentagon as Army secretary, and Ryan McCarthy, Esper’s successor as Army secretary, who was a vice president at Lockheed Martin. Patrick Shanahan, appointed by Trump as deputy defense secretary in 2017 and then made acting secretary for the first six months of 2019, had a 30-year career at Boeing.

Yet it’s not clear that the Trump administration — despite its promise to “drain the swamp” and the president’s more recent attacks on military leadership — has done anything to break down the links between industry and government. Trump has pushed the purchase of U.S.-made weapons as “one of our primary foreign policy tools, and that certainly benefits the defense industry,” she said, adding that although the Obama administration was no “slouch” in this department, the degree to which Trump has made it a priority represents “a significant departure.”

 

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wot did the late President Johnson say ---make me the President and ill give you a war

Who sold all that shit to the UAE?

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