Was trying to find the pic of his security detail from today with a dude with a rifle standing at the base of the stairs to his jet, but couldn't clip it. Is this normal, or just more cosplay? Here was the only similar pic I could find.
The whole schtick is cosplay.
We all know a guy who: by all accounts, served honorably, got himself a TV gig, an (alleged) drinking problem, a few divorces, an unceremonious removal from a non-profit (see alleged drinking problem), and along the way vastly out-punted his intellectual coverage. The pushups with the Joes, the shitty mil-vit-bro-black-rifle-9Line-yut-yut cliche tattoos - it all comes together and fits really nicely when viewed through the lens of the guy in a group chat trying to look tough or "cool" about what he knows. We've all seen this kind of guy in a bar around Coronado or Virginia Beach; we've seen this kind of guy on podcasts and youtube shows. It's rank insecurity masquerading as competence. The problem for this kinda guy is that there are a shit ton of folks out there who know the score and knows he's a hollow suit.
I've still yet to see anyone make a rational defense of the escapade. I've seen some posts that are dripping with whataboutism, I've seen what appear to be the opinions of some failed night-court JAG, and I've seen some "so what," replies here, but nobody has yet to actually defended putting TOTs in a commercial messaging app that the IC and DoD just got done saying had exploitable backdoors. If you dont (or wont) understand why putting the TOTs in a Signal chat is bad a) go look at the threat systems Yemen has picked up from the Iranians and b) consider resigning your clearance. You can sea-lawyer your way through rhetorical mealy-mouthed partisan talking points, but I'm still waiting to see someone say, "yeah, this okay, no issues."
Moral outrage? No. Professional embarrassment - they're different.