"He doesn't know what a war fighter is"

Fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer says that Trump's decision to stop a Pentagon review of Eddie Gallagher sends a message "that you can get away with things. We have to have good order and discipline. It's the backbone of what we do." Via CBS pic.twitter.com/SrSSBILvLV

— Holly Lee (@LeeHolly81) November 26, 2019

The battle that culminated in President Trump’s firing of Richard V. Spencer once again illustrates an ugly truth about the Trump presidency: The only core value Trump aspires to in public service is that there are no core values.

For Trump, in other words, the impunity is the point.

Spencer, the Navy secretary who was ousted over his effort to discipline a Navy SEAL convicted of posing for a photograph with the corpse of a teen-aged member of the Islamic State, delivered a stark new warning about Trump’s decision in an interview with CBS News that aired Monday night.

“What message does that send to the troops?” Spencer said. “That you can get away with things. We have to have good order and discipline. It’s the backbone of what we do.”

You can get away with things. That might sound deeply troubling to many, but is there any doubt that this is Trump’s intended message? If Trump decides you’re one of his people, you can get away with things.

Trump, who ordered Spencer to refrain from taking away Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s Trident pin identifying him as a SEAL, claims he was protecting “our war fighters.”

“A war fighter is a profession of arms,” Spencer responded on CBS News. “And a profession of arms has standards that they have to be held to — and that they hold themselves to.”

It’s eerie how perfectly these Spencer quotes overlap, in reverse, on top of the message that Trump has blared about his whole presidency from Day One. In every conceivable way, Trump has proclaimed that he and his loyalists will not be held to any standards of any kind in public service — and will not hold themselves to any such standards, either.