President Donald Trump has appointed loyalist MAGA celebrities and lawmakers to oversee America’s military academies.
The conservative appointees include right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, disgraced retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who admitted lying to the FBI in 2017, and Maureen Bannon, the Army veteran daughter of conspiracy theorist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
The move to stack the board with Trump loyalists came after a push last month to purge the military academies of “woke” influences.
The president made the announcements in a series of Truth Social posts on Monday night.
Flynn and Bannon will be on the Board of Visitors for West Point, the nation’s oldest military academy.
Flynn resigned as Trump’s national security adviser in 2017 after pleading guilty to making false statements about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. The president later pardoned him.
Also on the board will be Major General David Bellavia, who won the Medal of Honor for his bravery in the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, Lieutenant General Dan Walrath, Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt, and West Point graduate and former paratrooper Meaghan Mobbs, now an expert on stress in the military.
Kirk, founder of the Turning Point USA right-wing network, was named on the Board of Visitors for the United States Air Force Academy along with Dina Powell, who was Trump’s deputy national security adviser in his first term. Other new board members include retired Air Force Colonel Doug Nikolai and Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville.
Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer was named to the board of the United States Naval Academy. Trump also appointed Walt Nauta, his valet and Mar-a-Lago assistant who was indicted with the president during the aborted investigation into the misuse of classified documents.
Also on the board will be Republican Reps “Doc Ronnie” Jackson, Derek Van Orden, Senator Tim Sheehy, and businessman Earl Ehrhart. Jackson was reduced in rank after he retired in rank from rear admiral (lower half) to captain after he retired in the wake of an inspector general’s report which found that while he was the presidential physician, he “made sexual and denigrating statements” about a female subordinate, drank alcohol inappropriately with subordinates and took Ambien while on duty.
While the boards are mainly advisory, they also have input on finances, methods of teaching, and academy curriculums.
