“You Create a Legend”: Trump Warned That Firing Generals Could Backfire

A discussion about Donald Trump’s pick of Huff Post personality Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be Secretary of Defense on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday morning turned to questions about the president-elect wanting to clean house at the Pentagon.

With Hegseth having made comments on a podcast, stating, “First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in, any of the DEI woke s—, has got to go,” co-host Joe Scarborough said plans by the incoming administration for remaking the military will blow up in his face.

“Do you know what happens when you fire a general? You create a legend,” Scarborough told his panel. “When you create a legend you start lawsuits, you start about a three-year war against this general or that general.”

“It all sounds great, everybody’s got a plan until what does Mike Tyson say, ‘Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face the first time.’ All of these things that people are flexing about, ”I’m going to go in, and I’m going to fire this’ — you know, you do that, you create a legend, you create a political opponent that has the entire country behind him and it makes things tougher.”