Army Secretary Advises Generals to ‘Exercise Good Judgment’ on Social Media, Stay out of Culture Wars

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth advised Army generals to exercise good judgment on social media, following reports of a two-star Army general, Maj. Gen. Pat Donahoe, being under investigation for various reasons including his combative tweets to conservatives and junior female officers on Twitter.

“The key for senior leaders in an environment that is as politicized, unfortunately, as the one that we’re all operating in, is to exercise good judgment,” said Wormuth at a press conference at the yearly Association of the United States Army convention.

“One of the things I think that’s most important to [Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville] and I is keeping the Army apolitical and keeping it out of the culture wars, because frankly, we have got to be able to have a broad appeal, you know, when only 9% of kids are interested in serving,” she said, acknowledging the Army’s recruiting difficulties.

She went on further to say:

We have got to make sure that we are careful about not alienating, you know, wide swaths of the American public through the Army. So I think you know, we absolutely want our general officers out on social media, but they need to exercise good judgment. You know, they need to be positive and factual about what the Army officer offers, but not I think get drawn into frankly, some of the inflammatory kind of environment that frankly, Twitter really lends itself to.

Donahoe, who until recently was the commanding general of the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning and has had his retirement halted pending the completion of at least one Department of the Army inspector general investigation, had sent several tweets that caught widespread media attention.

In one case, Donahoe attempted to alert Hillsdale College that a graduate student of theirs was challenging him on social media over COVID-19 measures. He infamously tweeted: “Hey @Hillsdale come get your boy.”

In another instance, he tweeted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he “couldn’t be more wrong,” after the latter did a segment on the U.S. military becoming more feminine. Donahoe, however, was hardly the only military leader who weighed in, however.

Perhaps more problematic were his tweets to junior female officers, including several exchanges that ventured into inappropriate fraternization with a student at Fort Benning, as detailed recently by military whistleblower and blogger Terminal CWO.

Some reporters present at the press conference argued that if the Army did not defend Donahoe, it would send a message to women and minorities that the Army would not protect them.

Wormuth responded to those arguments, “We always want to have the backs of our soldiers, I think there are ways to do that, that are more effective than others.”

She held the Army’s senior enlisted officer, Sergeant Maj. Michael Grinston, as an example of how to behave on social media as an Army leader.

“He has on occasion you know, spoken up for women whether it was about you know, against negative commentary about their ability to be in combat or their maternity uniforms. So, I think that there’s absolutely a way to stand up for our soldiers and have their back. But again, I think the the key, really, is tone and kind of, you know, looking at your audience.”

McConville added:

My wife was a soldier, my daughter’s a soldier. We have 185,000 women serving with distinction the United States Army. I’ve served with women multiple times in combat zones. … I remember very specifically, in 2004, when the [joint operations center] was getting overrun, we got a frantic call from the corps headquarters. We get aircraft down there, and we responded with a team of Apaches and they got down there and they saved a whole bunch of lives and the leader of that Apache team was CW2 [Sydney Roselle] and I don’t remember anyone questioning her gender. They saved our life. I think it’s really important that stories need to be told. Not necessarily getting into a left, right, back and forth on on Twitter.

Wormuth said she believed the Army should look at social media guidance to senior leaders, given the controversy with Donahoe.

“I think it’s certainly worth looking into, do we feel like, you know, we’ve got the best available training out there for our leaders who are going to be on social media,” she said.

She said she did not want to comment on the investigation of Donahoe, which she said was “ongoing” and “not completed and has not come forward for any kind of adjudication.”

“What I will say, again, is that I do want our leaders to be able to have a social media presence. And to be able to speak up for soldiers and defend soldiers if they’re being unduly attacked. But I think in this environment, senior leaders have to choose their words very carefully and exercise good judgment,” she said.

McConville agreed.

“We’re not going to comment on [the] investigation, but what I think is really important, I’ll tell you what we expect from our generals — we expect the highest highest level of of character,” he said.

He also expressed faith in the investigation process. “There’s plenty of due process and appeals in that but it does take time And I believe that the system will handle that case in the appropriate manner like we handle every other case with general officers that happens,” he said.

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