© Mike Segar / Reuters
Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen on Sunday expanded on his criticism of Donald Trump in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, after endorsing Hillary Clinton at the DNC. Allen told Stephanopoulos that Trump as president could cause an unprecedented “civil military crisis, the like of which we’ve not seen in this country.” He added, “When we swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, which is a document and a set of principles and it supports the rule of law, one of those is to ensure that we do not obey illegal orders.”
Trump has said he supports killing the families of alleged terrorists, waterboarding, and other torture, all of which are illegal. “He’s talked about carpet-bombing ISIL,” Allen said. “Who do you think is going to get carpet-bombed when all that occurs? It’s going to be innocent families.” Allen noted that such an order would cause a military conflict, in which it would have to determine whether they would carry out illegal actions. “What we need to do is ensure that we don’t create an environment that puts us on a track conceivably where the United States military finds itself in a civil military crisis with a commander in chief who would have us do illegal things,” he said.