said

“I think people should be concerned, in the military and out of it, about the politicization of the military, and the attempt to use it to do the president’s personal will,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director of the Washington-based think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for restraint in U.S. foreign policy.

Army officer and chairman of VoteVets, a nonprofit group that supports veterans and progressive causes, said in a statement.

“Pete is dedicated to ensuring that our military is focused on lethality and readiness, not woke ideology,” Johnson said in a statement.

The former president’s longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, made waves with a series of interviews in which he disclosed that Trump spoke wistfully of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals, and said he believed that Trump’s views aligned with “the general definition of fascist.”

“The kind of outcome where you have a military that is used as the tool of a despot — I don’t think we’re particularly close to that,” said Friedman, of Defense Priorities.