If the Coast Guard Commandant Can Be Fired for Pushing DEI, Can the USMC Commandant Be Fired for Lying?

President Trump ordered the firing of Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan Tuesday for neglecting readiness to curry favor with the trendy DEI set in the Biden’s inept and corrupt administration; see ‘You’re Fired!’: Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan Immediately Gets Walking Papers for Focusing on DEI – RedState.

U.S. Naval Institute News reviewed a message from the acting secretary of Homeland Security explaining that Fagan had been removed from her position.

“Under my statutory authority as the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security I have relieved Admiral Linda L. Fagan of her duties as Commandant of the United States Coast Guard,” the message reads. “She served a long and illustrious career, and I thank her for her service to our nation.”

Fox News initially reported on Fagan’s firing, citing a senior DHS official who described an “erosion of trust” regarding Fagan’s tenure. The report also points to her “failure to address border security threats” and an “excessive focus on [DEI] initiatives.”

If that is going to be the standard, a lot of generals and admirals will be packing their crap and getting the hell off the battlefield. Take, for instance, the case of USMC Commandant General Eric M. Smith. 

The forum is the January 15 Defense Writers Group forum. This is the day after Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, where he hammered away on warfighting, readiness, and the corrosive effect of DEI; see Pete Hegseth Brings His ‘A’ Game and Gets the Job Done – RedState.

Moderator:  Next is Eric Schmitt, New York Times.

DWG:  Thank you. 

I wanted to ask you a little bit about yesterday’s hearing on the Hill, if you watched any of it, in particular about Mr. Hegseth’s clear focus on, if he’s confirmed to be Defense Secretary of the Trump administration, to scale back DEI programs in the Defense Department.  I wanted to ask you about any reaction you had to the hearing, but more specifically, do you think there are DEI programs that have been in place over the last few years that could be scaled back to improve readiness, combat effectiveness in the military and particularly in the Corps?

General Smith:  I’ll be candid.  I didn’t watch the hearings precisely because to me it doesn’t matter.  The SecDef is going to be the SecDef.  He will be or she will be approved by the Senate, appointed by the President.

As far as DEI, the Marine Corps has not had DEI programs.  We have a meritocracy-based system.  You can be anything you want to be.  If you’re a Sophie Mundell you can be an artillery officer as long as you can sling a 95-pound shell and you meet the physical standards, you meet the academic rigorous standards, you can be anything you want.  If you’re Jasmin Moghbeli, you can be a Cobra pilot.  If you’re Nicole Mann you can be an F-18 pilot and a NASA astronaut.  Both of those two ladies happen to be NASA astronauts. 

We don’t do DEI in the Marine Corps, we never have.  We’re a meritocracy-based organization.  We always have been.  If you want to apply for an MOS, strap on your pack, grab your rifle and make a run at it.

Hmmm. “We don’t do DEI in the Marine Corps, we never have.” Really? As Joe Biden ordered each of the services to embed DEI in its training, it is a helluva an admission by the USMC Commandant to find they told Biden to f*** right off. I’d think more highly of him were that the case, but unfortunately, it is just like most everything else uttered by our military leadership under Biden: a lie.

We have an interesting situation here. Either General Smith doesn’t know that the USMC is heavily involved in DEI, in which case he’s an utter imbecile. Or he does know the USMC practices DEI as a core element of its personnel policy, and he thinks we are all imbeciles who will believe what he says. This is reminiscent of the quote attributed to comedian Mort Sahl long, long after he’d stopped making an attempt to be funny: “Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Nixon couldn’t tell the truth, and Reagan couldn’t tell the difference.” Smith is clearly in one of the latter two categories. Given that Smith claims he had no interest at all in Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, I think it is easy to find Smith’s slot.

What is telling is that nearly two days after President Trump signed an executive order abolishing this racist nonsense from the federal government, Smith’s Marine Corps proudly continues to pledge its allegiance.

Earlier today, I posted on the return of former USMC Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller to the Department of Defense as a senior personnel and readiness adviser in the office of the Secretary of Defense; see Trump Taps Officer Who Castigated Lack of Afghan Accountability for Defense Department Post. Smith was the Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps when Scheller was illegally confined as a flight risk and when sources inside the Marine Corps slandered Scheller, claiming he was a danger to himself and his family. In his announcement, Scheller called out this extraordinary claim by Smith.

After Mr. Hegseth’s hearing last week, meritocracy and DEI have become topics of conversation. In fact, days after the hearing, the Commandant of the Marine Corps addressed the Pentagon press corps by saying, “We don’t do DEI in the Marine Corps; we never have. We are a meritocracy-based organization – always have been.” 

Without pointing out all the documented facts countering the CMC’s statement, what should alarm every American is the speed at which senior military officers tell new political leadership whatever they want to hear. It is why America continues losing wars, and why DEI became prevalent in every service. We have yet to witness an active senior general officer accept accountability for any mistake in recent history. 

Truth… DEI, incompetence, and moral weakness (telling people what they want to hear or not speaking up) are all symptoms of the larger problem: a system incentivizing career progression over performance.

What we have here is a sad case of a senior officer who has completely bought into the DEI balderdash. He may not have moved on it as aggressively as Admiral Fagan, but he’s clearly willing to continue to devote resources to DEI and lie to protect it. If Fagan needed to be fired for being stupid, Smith probably needs to hit the bricks for both lying in such a sloppy way and seemingly starting a resistance movement to save DEI.

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