Growing up, every morning in school, my whole class would recite the Pledge of Allegiance. As a young man, I thought I was swearing loyalty to a flag, some piece of cloth. As I grew older, I realized that I was swearing loyalty to the Republic and to what that Republic stood for, as defined in the Constitution. I wasn’t swearing loyalty to Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson. I was swearing loyalty to the nation and what it had stood for since the Constitution was ratified. I was swearing loyalty to do what was right. Today, there is a lot of talk about loyalty, but most of it seems to be centered on loyalty to one man. I look at it as loyalty given and the loyalty that Trump didn’t return. Whether it is our service members or our allies, it seems Trump is not living up to the promises this nation has made. Just yesterday, I was reading about Trump saying that he has ordered the scaling back of our participation in the U.S. – ROK exercises that were supposed to be held with South K...
When Loyalty Only Flows One Way There’s a pattern running through the last several years of American leadership, and it’s time we stop pretending not to see it. It shows up in foreign policy, in military decisions, in the way allies are treated, and even in the way his own staff is handled. The pattern is simple: loyalty only flows one way. Trump demands it from everyone around him — sailors, diplomats, allies, and administration officials — but when the cost of loyalty falls on them, he doesn’t return it. And the consequences aren’t abstract. They’re happening to real people, right now. I still feel that Trump thinks that our military is suckers and losers First there was the USS Ford. The Ford was originally on a routine deployment, then everything changed . The Ford left Virginia in June 2025 for a standard Mediterranean/NATO rotation. That was supposed to be the whole mission. But within months, the administration began redirecting her again and again as globa...