Trumpland’s war on the military: Why the ex-president’s followers have General Milley in their sights

It wasn’t long ago that deference to the US military was one of the Republican Party’s core tenets – and one of its most effective cudgels against the Democrats. Ever since the days of the Vietnam War and the counter-cultural uprising against it, the right-left divide has regularly been framed by the mainstream GOP as a fight between the military patriots of the heartland and spineless metropolitan peaceniks.

This played out particularly vividly in the 2004 presidential campaign, which saw a concerted, highly organised and highly effective effort to undermine John Kerry via dubious attacks on his military service. When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2007 and tried to stop the George W Bush administration’s “surge” of new military forces to Iraq, they were endlessly at pains to stress that “we all support the troops” – and for much of the Obama administration, the president’s supposed “weakness” on military matters was one of the right’s central attacks on him.

But now, with Donald Trump voted out of office and his supporters regrouping for a new culture war, it’s the US’s military leaders who find themselves in the harsh spotlight.