One Likely Accurate Conclusion: The President Lied When He Said He Had Consulted With His Generals
The heads of the branches of the U.S. military were “blindsided” by President Donald Trump’s tweets announcing a total ban on an estimated 15,000 service members who are transgender.
“One of the heads of the military branches was informed by a staffer of the President’s tweets on transgender policy and had no idea it was coming,” CNN reports, citing a U.S. defense official.Â
CNN does note that a “US official told CNN that [Defense Secretary James]Â Mattis was consulted on Trump’s plan to announce a transgender military ban.” Mattis (photo: right) is currently on vacation.
The Secretary of Defense is not a general; the position is by law a civilian one.Â
CNN also posted this tweet, effectively questioning the honesty of Trump’s tweet:
Late Thursday morning Reuters broke a story quoting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who said in a memo that there will be no changes to U.S. policy on transgender service members until he receives explicit direction from the Commander-in-Chief.Â
Also late Thursday morning, USA TODAY reported Vice Admiral Robert Burke, the Chief of Naval Personnel, sent an email stating transgender service members can continue on as usual, at least for now.
USA TODAY obtained the email and reports the “Navy will not immediately discharge transgender sailors and will continue to provide them with medical treatment despite the tweets fired off by President Trump on Wednesday.”
The paper adds: “The email from Vice Adm. Robert Burke also acknowledges that Trump’s announcement is ‘causing concern for some of our sailors and that they likely have questions.'”
All of this leads to one likely accurate conclusion: The president lied when he said he had consulted with his generals.Â
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
Trump’s claim transgender soldiers cannot be in the armed forces because the cost of their care is “tremendous” is not only false, it’s mathematically inaccurate.
USA TODAY notes, “any saving Trump hoped to achieve by denying transgender troops medical care will be dwarfed by the cost of replacing them. Hundreds of troops have identified themselves as transgender in order to receive medical treatment, including about 150 sailors in the Navy, according to two U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about medical issues.”
Replacing those 6,600 transgender troops would likely be far more costly. The Army, for example, is spending $300 million this year on bonuses and ads to recruit 6,000 soldiers. That does not include the money needed to train, equip and pay them.
The RAND Corporation has determined the medical costs for transitioning transgender service members is at most $8.4 million annually.
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Image:Â DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro via Flickr