Former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are normally held in high regard for their decades of service to our country, however, Admiral Mike Mullen (Ret.) doesn’t deserve praise.  Here’s why.

Admiral Mullen would have you believe that “I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership,” in his commentary, “I Cannot Remain Silent,” published by The Atlantic.com.  The anti-Trump media will be sure to take advantage of his charge.

Before I provide you with evidence that he has been anything but reticent of criticizing President Trump, I need to remind you of one of his last public service disasters.  I consider it a dereliction of duty.

Most of us were optimistic when Mullen, along with Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering were selected to chair the Accountability Review Board (ARB) to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11-12, 2012 killings of our ambassador and four dedicated U.S personnel at our Benghazi compound.  That was until we learned that they had been selected by none other than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Much has been written about the ARB concluding that “systemic” management and leadership failures at the State Department led to “grossly inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi.  However, “the Board did not find any individual U.S. Government employee engaged in misconduct or willfully ignored his or her responsibilities, and therefore did not find reasonable cause to believe that an individual breached his or her duty so as to be subject of a recommendation for disciplinary action.”

One last point of interest.  While testifying before the House Oversight Committee on September 19, 2013, Republicans questioned why the ARB did not interview senior officials including Secretary Clinton and two deputy Secretaries of State.

Mullen told the committee, “it was a universal consensus over time that we did the interviews we needed to do and that we didn’t do the interviews we didn’t need to do.”

“Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen are respected public servants who dedicated their lives to this country, and accusations that they engaged in a ‘coverup’ at Secretary Clinton’s bidding are completely unfounded.” – Rep. Elijah Cummings

“The facts show that the ARB report was prepared by people of unquestioned integrity, that the process has been transparent and open, and that lessons have been learned and are being implemented.” Douglas Frantz, State Department Assistant Secretary.

NOW LET’S EXAMINE Mullen’s “reticence” to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump. First, this from his piece in The Atlantic:

Casting doubt on those in the military service following President Trump as their  commander in chief, Mullen wrote, “I am less confident in the soundness of order they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have not risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops.”  Further, he accused the president of co-opting them for political purposes.  Shameful.

ON MAY 18, 2017, during an appearance on CBS This Morning, Mullen was asked to comment on the selection of Robert Mueller to act as special counsel.  “I’ve got a lot of faith in him,” he said.

“Clearly, there is one issue after another, and to the degree the administration feels it’s under siege, they keep generating the crisises,” he said.

Siding with his Deep State cohorts, Mullen said, “If you continue to press hard on the intelligence community, the worry is the intelligence community may pull back on what they share with the president.”  How prescient.

ON AUGUST 13, 2017, appearing on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, Mullen expressed that he was “extremely concerned” over President Trump’s escalating rhetoric on North Korea.

“If this results in a military strike, the unintended consequences of that, the possibility that there are disproportional responses, miscalculations … it can really get out of hand fast.”

ON DECEMBER 31, 2017, appearing on ABC’s This Week with Martha Raddatz, the “silent” Mullen said, “He’s (Trump) been incredibly disruptive with respect to the institutions, the commitments, the leadership, where we have been for the last 70 years.”

“We’re closer, in my view,” he told Raddatz, “to a nuclear war with North Korea and in that region that we have ever been.  I don’t see the opportunities to solve this diplomatically at this particular point.”

APRIL 9, 2018 – The retired Mullen, appearing on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, said that he was “extremely concerned” about military officers like retired Gen. John Kelly acting in political roles in the Trump administration.  Mullen said he “worries a great deal about Kelly indirectly undermining us as a military, because of his role as White House chief of staff, a highly political job.”  Mullen accused Kelly of politicizing the death of his son to support the political outcome for the president, saying that he found it very, very distressing.

ON MAY 8, 2018, the “silent” Mullen, speaking at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, commented on the potential for war that would deepen if the upcoming summit between Trump and Kim Jung Un fails.

How’s that for optimism?

He said that he “worries that Trump’s public tone on North Korea, casually threatening a nuclear holocaust over Twitter.  I don’t know if I can fully convey to you how shocking it is to hear the commander in chief talk about nuclear weapons with nonchalance.”

ON AUGUST 19, 2018, appearing on Fox News Sunday, the “silent” Mullen accused President Trump of creating an enemies list, as he supported former CIA Director John Brennan‘s right to comment on the Trump administration.  While conceding that the president has the right to revoke Brennan’s security clearance, it didn’t stop him from saying, “It’s an “egregious abuse of power and authority.”

That’s just touching the surface of this man’s attempt to, in his way, bring down the Trump presidency.

I understand that the “silent” Mullen is now a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs.  You can be sure that he is fomenting more hatred there for the Trump presidency.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.