Trump sycophant and Air Force Reserve (Lt. Col.) chaplain Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) is now trying to lie his way out of violating military regulations in his campaign ads by blaming a “vendor,” while continuing to violate the same regulations! Is anyone surprised?
For background, from my post last week:
Over the last several months, I’ve written about a group of twenty GOP House members and one senator who went on the warpath against the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), writing letters to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper decrying MRFF’s successes in keeping military members free from unwanted religious proselytizing during the pandemic.
To appease these fundamentalist Christian GOP Congress members, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Matthew P. Donovan rewrote one of the DoD’s core regulations on religion, DoD Instruction 1300.17, to allow just about any form of previously prohibited religious behavior and proselytizing, with no regard for the right of service members to be free from unwanted religion.
Leading that group of fundamentalist Christian GOP Congress members was Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), an Air Force Reserve chaplain, who is now running in his state’s special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated in 2019 by Johnny Isakson. Because this is a special election and there was no primary, Collins is running not only against Democrat Raphael Warnock but also against fellow Republican Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp in January 2020 to fill the seat until the special election could be held. While other Republican senators facing reelection are now trying to distance themselves from President Trump, Collins and Loeffler are both running on who is the biggest defender of Trump.
But it seems that the same Doug Collins who led the charge for changing DoD regulations to allow his fellow fundamentalist Christians in the military to shove their religion down other’s throats has no regard for military regulations when it comes to running his Senate campaign.
By using images of himself in uniform in his campaign ads, Collins is flagrantly violating DoD Directive 1344.10, “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces,” which contains a detailed section on what is and what is not allowed in campaign materials for active, reserve, or retired members of the military running for office. For the text of the the regulation see my post from last week.
In short, the ONLY use allowed of a photo in uniform by a candidate for office is as part of a biographical history, and even then it must be accompanied by other non-military photos, and must also be accompanied by a “prominent and clearly displayed disclaimer” stating that the photo does not imply DoD endorsement. What is absolutely NOT allowed is for a candidate to use a photo of themselves in uniform as the primary image in their campaign ads.
Doug Collins has violated this regulation over two dozen times in recent weeks.
When this was reported to MRFF by numerous service members and other senior DoD personnel last week, MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper demanding that Collins be ordered to “cease and desist from any further use of photographs of himself in uniform to enhance his current election bid to become a U.S. Senator in Georgia,” and that “criminal UCMJ charges be aggressively brought against Collins so that he faces a formal trial by court-martial.”
Unbeknownst to MRFF, Fred Wellman, the Senior Advisor for Veterans Affairs at The Lincoln Project was also going after Collins on Twitter for his regulation-violating ads, and has continued to do so.
Then, last Friday, MRFF was contacted by Newsweek for a story they were doing on the outrage over Collins’s regulation-violating abuse of the uniform. The Newsweek article, “Republican Violating Defense Policy with Military Uniform in Campaign Ads Infuriates Veterans,” came out later that day.
At some point between the Newsweek article coming out and yesterday, Collins removed most of his regulation-violating ads, but not all.
The Collins campaign told Business Insider yesterday that the uproar over the ads was the result of nothing but a "long-standing grudge" that MRFF has against Collins.
Campaign spokesman Dan McLagan said:
"For years, Doug has been fighting Mikey Weinstein's heinous attacks on our service members' constitutional — and God-given — right to freedom of religion. … Mikey is hell bent on eradicating religion from the military, and he hates Doug because he's fighting for every military member's right to worship."
McLagan also claimed that the ads did not "display a properly formatted disclaimer because of a vendor error.” This is not only impossible to believe, and an obvious attempt to weasel out of Collins’s bald-faced violation of military regulations, but makes no difference. Even with a disclaimer, these ads would still have violated DoD Directive 1344.10 because it is not part of a biographical history that depicts Collins in the performance of his actual military duties. It is a campaign ad, which is not allowed at all, disclaimer or not.
One ad not removed by Collins is this one, apparently because it has a “disclaimer,” if that’s what that minuscule text – too tiny to be seen with the naked eye – is in the upper left-hand corner of the image. And, as already noted, this is a political ad and would still violate regulations even if it had a “prominent and clearly displayed” disclaimer.
Collins also did not remove his “donate to me” ad. Big surprise.
As Mikey Weinstein told Business Insider in response to the Collins campaign’s excuse that MRFF has a grudge against Collins and disingenuous claim that the “vendor” did it, MRFF’s message to Doug Collins is:
“Shut the eff up and follow the regulations.”