A Pentagon Official Steve Blank has resigned from Defense Business Board

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A Pentagon official Steve Blank as resigned and denounced the president. He was one of the only people on the Defense Business Board who survived Trump’s firing spree of Pentagon officials. President Trump replaced 9 members of the board with his own loyalists. Those people were including former Trump campaign staffer David Bossie and his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Point to be noted that the acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller himself a Trump loyalist installed to replace Mark Esper. Miller said he was proud to welcome each of these new members to the Defense Business Board. He issued a statement and said, “These individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department and our nation well”.

Blank refused to continue serving on the board once it had been filled with presidential yes-men. Blank’s resignation letter compares the US under Trump to that of a dictatorship consolidating power and influence in a small group of individuals loyal to the president. He wrote, “When other nations required loyalty pledges to a party and launched ideological purges of their best and brightest, we recognized that they did so because they were weak. Their ideas and values could not withstand dissent or discussion. In exchange for ideological purity, the abrupt termination of more than half of the Defense Business Board and their replacement with political partisans have now put the nation’s safety and security at risk”.

He wrote before resigning his position that his service at the Defense department was a service to the country not to a party. It is noteworthy that Trump also fired numerous senior Pentagon officials. He terminated then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on 9^th November. Esper’s relationship with President Trump had been strained when the former Secretary of Defense refused to back the president’s desire to invoke the Insurrection Act against Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer. Esper was also working with Congress to rename a number of US military bases. The day after Trump fired Esper, other Pentagon officials also resigned including Jen Stewart (the chief of staff to the secretary of defense), James Anderson (the undersecretary for defense policy), and Joseph Kernan (the undersecretary for defense for intelligence and security).