In military regulations, two things are often listed together as things that a service member is prohibited from endorsing or promoting while in uniform – their religious beliefs and their political opinions. Earlier this week, a group of military members came to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) about their military supervisor who was promoting both at once. How? By wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with the words “Make Christmas Great Again.”
According to the service members, this supervisor had a history of promoting both his religious beliefs and political opinions, with one describing him in an email to MRFF as “a huge Trump fan and never stops talking about it,” and “also a huge Jesus fan and also never stops talking about that.”
The supervisor’s “Make Christmas Great Again” hat, the wearing of which was also a violation of uniform regulations, was the last straw for his subordinates, but they were afraid to say anything because he outranked them. This is the number one reason that service members come to MRFF – the fear of retribution if they complain to or about a superior. By coming to MRFF and letting MRFF handle the situation, they can remain safely anonymous.
MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein promptly went over the supervisor’s offensively-hatted head, contacting the supervisor’s commander, and the problem was quickly resolved in a matter of minutes, with the commander ordering the supervisor to cease and desist from wearing his religio-political headgear.
Thus ended one active duty military Christian Trumper’s attempts, as one of the service members put it in the following email thanking MRFF, “to get us all to vote for Trump and to become Christians like him.”
From: (Active Duty Military Member’s E-Mail Address Withheld)
Subject: "Make Christmas Great Again" Red Baseball Hat
Date: December 3, 2020 at 4:22:49 PM MST
To: Information Weinstein
Dear the MRFF,
We all would like to thank you for intervening into the hot controversy in our military unit when our supervisor (name and rank withheld) began wearing a red baseball hat which looked just like Trump’s MAGA hat.
But instead of MAGA on it the hat carried the message “Make Christmas Great Again”.
Our military supervisor is a huge Trump fan and never stops talking about it.
He is also a huge Jesus fan and also never stops talking about that.
Since he outranks us and is asshole buddies with our unit’s EEO and IG folks there wasn’t much we could do.
As we work in a secure area we could not get any pictures of him wearing the red “Make Christmas Great Again” baseball hat.
There are 14 of us in this group that asked MRFF to take our complaints for action.
10 of us are Christians and 1 of us is Jewish and the other 3 identify as just no religious preference.
We contacted Mr. Weinstein in the evening and told him what was happening.
He told us how wrong it was for our military supervisor to be wearing that hat in the way he was doing it and he asked for the contact information for our supervisor's commander.
Next morning we noticed that the hat was no longer anywhere to be seen! And our supervisor would not even make eye contact with any of us.
Mr Weinstein had called our commander in the early morning to demand that our supervisor be ordered to never wear that hat again in our duty area and during duty hours.
Mr. Weinstein told us that our commander had promised to comply with the demand and agreed that the wearing of that hat was not to be allowed.
None of us felt as though we could object personally to our military supervisor without facing his payback.
Mr. Weinstein had also demanded that our supervisor be disciplined for his attempts to get us all to vote for Trump and to become Christians like him.
No word on that part yet.
Thank you & big shout-out to the MRFF for taking this on for us and getting us the WIN!
We will all be so grateful always to the MRFF!
(names, ranks, MOS, unit and installation of Active Duty Military Members all withheld)