It's been 21 days since Donald Trump whimsically fired off several tweets that he thought could instantaneously set military-wide policy on a matter the Pentagon has been studying since last year. Top military brass quickly said they would keep the current policy of allowing transgender soldiers to serve openly until such time as Trump was able to get it together, do what a real commander in chief would do, and issue formal guidance on the policy change. As of Monday, Defense Sec. James Mattis was still waiting on that guidance and, even when he gets it, it's still not entirely clear what will be done with it given that the issues involved are clearly too complicated for Trump to comprehend. CNN writes:
"We are going to study the issue," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.
"The policy is going to address whether or not transgenders can serve under what conditions, what medical support they require, how much time would they be perhaps non-deployable leaving others to pick up their share of everything. There's a host of issues and I'm learning more about this than I ever thought I would and it's obviously very complex to include the privacy issues which we respect," Mattis said.
"I am waiting right now to get the President's guidance in and that I expect to be very soon," he added.
Mattis said Pentagon officials (whom he informally called "my people") were at the White House providing Trump aides with "any military background" that might help them actually inform the policy they are now crafting following Trump's whim. A Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon last year found that allowing transgender troops to serve openly would have "minimal impact" on unit cohesion, military readiness, and overall health care costs. That's the good news—actual research is already available that reveals Trump's complete ignorance on the matter (though Mattis declined to endorse the study at the press conference).
The bad news is that Trump isn't concerned with facts, only with feeding his ego and saving face when his many rants and utterances are shown to be born of sheer stupidity.
That means White House aides and Mattis's "people" are likely trying to hash out something that won't actually harm military readiness while also allowing Trump to believe that he's not the idiot he is.
Asked about the ban on August 10, Trump said he was doing the military "a great favor."
"I think I'm doing a lot of people a favor by coming out and just saying it," Trump said. "As you know it's been a very complicated issue for the military, it's been a very confusing issue for the military and I think I'm doing the military a great favor."
It's worth noting that with trouble brewing in North Korea, among other places, military leadership probably isn't real keen right now on making major changes in personnel policy. (That cuts both ways, since current policy allows open service for transgender troops already serving, but the change in recruitment policy was originally supposed to go into effect last month.) Trump may not know it, but people like Mattis and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Joseph Dunford have other things to worry about—like preventing a military confrontation that would cost thousands and thousands of lives.
It’s also worth noting that when Pentagon officials says they are “going to study” an issue, that’s usually code for “implementation could be months or even years away.”
This thing ain’t over by a long shot.