President Trump promised war on U.S. citizens. KY politicians stayed silent | Opinion

I recently wrote that we are living in the age of cowards, and here in Kentucky the cowardice of spineless GOP politicians and candidates rages on.

The day after President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth lectured hundreds of senior U.S. military officers whom they’d expensively and inexplicably flown in from around the world, I scanned the news and social media feeds of the Republicans vying for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s senate seat to get their reactions.

There were none. There still aren’t. And for three men who pathetically scratch and claw for every opportunity to praise Trump and attract his gaze for endorsement, this seemed a curiously missed opportunity.

I also checked for statements from our current “Release the Epstein files!” heroes in Kentucky’s congressional delegation — Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie — to the Trump and Hegseth speeches.

There is nothing.

Paul had posted clips from an unrelated congressional hearing, and Massie had only posted about his recent stops back here in Kentucky where, because the president keeps threatening to have him primaried, he is campaigning to keep his seat. “Conservatives,” Massie wrote, “must refuse to be silenced or intimidated.”

And yet Massie remains silent on Tuesday’s strikingly dangerous dressing down —in public, for the world to witness — of American generals and admirals. They all are. The question is why.

I watched the entirety of the speeches given by Hegseth and Trump to find the core reason for such an extraordinary gathering.

Hegseth strutted like a practiced-in-the-mirror peacock before our accomplished leaders, saying that he was tired of seeing “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals”; that they would return to a “warrior ethos.” And told the commanders that if they did not like what they were hearing from him, they could resign.

I felt sick watching military leaders — unlike Hegseth — who have earned respect, who have spent decades off-camera, dedicated to the defense and service of this country, being harangued by this young, slick braggart who barely skated through the confirmation process due to his lack of personal discipline.

During Hegseth’s confirmation, ranking member Sen. Jack Reed said Hegseth lacks “the character and composure and competence to hold the position of secretary of defense” and referenced Hegseth’s book “American Crusade,” in which he wrote that left-leaning Americans are not “mere political opponents” but “foes.”

Not to be outdone, President Trump — who never served and received multiple deferments, including for alleged bone spurs — followed Hegseth with an hour-plus, overtly partisan, rambling, low energy speech in which he mostly whined and preened about his own perceived accomplishments.

The president said the U.S. military will now be tasked with fighting “domestic enemies, “insurrectionists” “paid by the radical left,” and said that cities “run by the radical-left Democrats…they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within…. And I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military…”

So finally, there it was.

The sole reason for this expensive, disruptive, unprecedented meeting.

The president and his defense secretary were making the case to go to war against their own citizens.

When Sen. Paul was asked a few days ago on Meet the Press about the president posting on social media that there are “domestic terrorists” in our cities, Paul said to “be careful of the labels,” that we should be careful whom we label terrorists, and that we need to be going after terrorists in the Middle East.

Where does Paul stand after the lectures at Quantico? I see no public comments from him.

Where is Massie’s voice after his assertion that conservatives must refuse to be silenced or intimidated?

Where on earth are Kentucky’s chest-pounding, GOP senate hopefuls, the men continually on the record, shamelessly begging and pleading for the endorsement of a president who has announced that he intends to use the U.S. military to punish any American citizens he views as enemies or infidels for refusing to bow and kiss his ring?

Morris has said nothing.

Barr is on social media, blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown.

And Cameron? He’s on Facebook in a photo with President Trump to raise money.

This week the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense (who wants to be called the Secretary of War) stood on a stage in front of a giant American flag and told senior military leaders and the world that they intend to deploy lethal military apparatus against American citizens, and most of Kentucky’s most vocal Republican political leaders have gone to ground.

Why? Because they fear retribution from the president, the leader of their own party.

We are living in an age of extraordinary cowardice from Republicans who either serve in office or want to. Fear and cowardice of this magnitude are contagious, and Kentucky’s most prominent GOP politicians are infected — with silence — to save their own skins.

If they’re afraid to stand up for themselves, do you think they’ll stand up for you?

Teri Carter is a writer in Anderson County.