The presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, who last month was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, was met at an airport in Wisconsin by 11 police officers in uniform. The men were lined up not to arrest Trump but to shake hands with him.
Former National Security Advisor, CIA Director, and retired U.S. Air Force 4-star General Mike Hayden responded to the video with disgust. He wrote to the law enforcement officers: “You should be ashamed.”
You should be ashamed. https://t.co/4s94SpriU6
— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) June 19, 2024
In 2020, Hayden was among more than 130 former Republican national security officials who signed a public statement asserting that Trump was “dangerously unfit” to serve another term and endorsing Joe Biden. Many of the signers had served in the Trump administration.
The statement provides 10 reasons why Trump should not be re-elected including divisiveness: “In contrast to Reagan’s vision of America as a ‘shining city on a hill,’ Trump speaks of ‘American carnage,’ pits Americans against each other, and stokes fears that ‘angry mobs’ and ‘anarchists’ are destroying our country.”
Note: Trump continues to praise the Americans who broke the law (many of them violently) on January 6, 2021 during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump has called them “patriots” and “political hostages” and has vowed to pardon them if re-elected.
Part of the reason Hayden called out the Wisconsin officers is what he sees as disloyalty to their pledge to promote law and order and “Back the Blue.” A Capitol Police officer who had been attacked by protesters in the Capitol riot died the following day and more than 100 police officers were injured on January 6. Four officers who responded to the attack and guarded the federal building that day died by suicide within seven months.