Good leaders, all decision-makers, make their choices after taking in as much information as possible about the decision, including hearing from expert advisers. What they do not do is what the mainstream media wants President Trump to do, and that is follow the advice of expert advisers. No matter what they tell him he needs to do.

It is truly the most preposterous narrative I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I’ve been in the leader and decision making business for over three decades, primarily in the military, commanding organizations ranging from 300 to 14, 000 personal world-wide—in peace and war. Even in my most trying of circumstance as a commander of a combat unit, if I had listened to my advisers, my mission would have been an abject failure.

In that case those advisers were formal and informal. At one point I had to ignore my immediate supervisor because my unit and mission were detached from our normal command structure to an upper echelon of command. The base my unit was temporarily assigned to was commanded by another officer superior to me in rank (I was a lieutenant colonel and he was a brigadier general) but I had to even ignore his senior maintenance officer’s advice, and his angst over our presence and mission subsuming his priorities.

All the advisers told me I was crazy and presented data —some good, some poor— and various other anecdotal information to convince me the mission I was trying to accomplish couldn’t be done, even as we were getting it done. We successfully accomplished that mission for more than 30 days, operating beyond our personal and the technical limits of our capabilities, until the secretary of defense personally told me we could change our posture to normal operations—if there is such a thing in combat.

My team was thoroughly exhausted and we knew we had served our country in a maximum effort that none of us, or our advisers, had ever really done before. I’m very proud of those young men and women that I had the honor to lead. That is why this media narrative is so preposterous and needs to stop immediately.

Our country has a mission right now. It is a mission that has never been done before and the leader of the nation is doing all in his power, and our nation’s power, to get us to “mission complete” successfully. He has interfaced the entire time with expert advisors using data —initially very weak but getting better— and he likely has not made decisions according to all of their advice. As a matter of fact, I guarantee he hasn’t. President Trump knows, like I and many other leaders with experience in times of crisis, that his decisions have to get the mission accomplished without regard to any expert advice or otherwise. He is busy taking in every piece of information he can and making decisions. This is also happening at the state and local levels … and it has to.

https://twitter.com/TumbaSherman/status/1245781361601855488?s=20

The U.S. media outlets pushing this narrative do so at the detriment of their own country. They are also continuing to allow injection of partisanship into the effort by continuing this. They are on a fool’s errand and they know it. Their actions expose them for what they are—unprofessional and unethical. I hope someday this will change. Now let’s get on with the business of accomplishing the mission: saving lives and getting America back to work as soon as possible.

This piece was written by Col. Rob Maness on April 2, 2020. It originally appeared in RobManess.com and is used by permission.

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