Trump doesn't care about Eddie Gallagher and the Navy SEALs. He cares about what they represent

At any other time, former Navy Secretary Spencer's reported request for a private deal with the White House would have been met with open arms

Navy seal Edward Gallagher was demoted after posing with the corpse of an ISIS militant (AP)

The resignation letters — or the statements confirming someone’s been fired, depending on which side you believe — are all starting to sound the same.

The latest is from former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who riled Donald Trump by trying to follow military procedure in potentially ejecting Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher from the Navy SEALs. Gallagher was acquitted of murder and war crimes charges in July over the captive death of a teenage Isis fighter. At his military trial, he had been accused of stabbing the teenager several times while other SEALs were providing aid; the jury, while finding him not guilty of murder or attempted murder but guilty of posing inappropriately for photos with the captive’s corpse, ordered that he should be demoted a rank. Additionally, the Navy was to convene a review of status, as is standard after any conviction.

But Trump had other ideas. As commander-in-chief, he restored Gallagher's rank and called on Defense Secretary Mark Esper to give Spencer his marching orders.

The fired Navy secretary was as cutting as a military man could be. "Unfortunately, it has become apparent that in this respect, I no longer share the same understanding with the commander-in-chief who appointed me," Spencer wrote. "In regards to the key principle of good order and discipline, I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."

This echoes the words of a number of other military men who have walked away from — or been pushed out of — the Trump administration. Former defense secretary James Mattis said he was resigning as the president has "the right to have a secretary whose views are better aligned with yours”. Former John Bolton merely stated in his two-line letter that he "hereby resigns, effective immediately”, but appeared on television to suggest that his views and Trump’s on how a military should be run were fatally incompatible.

This is not a new occurrence, in other words, but the timing of the latest staff shuffle is instructive.

Trump needs to keep the type of raucous patriots who would support Gallagher onside. They are a large part of his core base. Failing to back a Navy SEAL could play badly, and he doesn’t want to take that risk when going into an election.

Spencer reportedly tried to propose a private deal with the White House: that one way of sorting out the Gallagher problem was to restore his rank and allow him to retire as a SEAL. At another time, we might speculate that Donald Trump would love nothing more than a one-on-one meeting with the Navy Secretary to seal an agreement, one he could bring up later as proof that he often meets behind closed doors to talk shop and solve problems with respected and respectable servicepeople. The suggestion that this request was refused and then used against Spencer speaks a lot about the president’s latest domestic strategies.

Of course, Trump’s main concern right now is impeachment. And with impeachment, if not removal, now a virtual certainty — possibly even before Christmas — he needs voter attention to be focused elsewhere. Manufactured outrage over the treatment of a convicted Navy SEAL is the perfect example. It allows Trump to appear loyal to his base and means he can flex his muscles as the commander-in-chief. Protocol and institutional norms be damned, he can say, I’ll stand up for the guys who go to war for America.

Officers, including former secretary Spencer, had made clear that an intervention by the president before all precedent had been followed would undermine "good order and discipline" in the ranks and allow the military to become too politicized. You could argue that Spencer going in front of reporters on Friday when he was still on active duty counts as insubordination. But it’s clear he was trying to make sure protocol was followed. The bigger issue is that Trump does not care which institutions or rules he has to trample over to keep himself afloat with his supporters now.

From flouting international convention over the legal status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank to the contents of his “perfect” phone call with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump only knows one way: his. The theatrics he brings to the role of president will never go away — particularly when distraction is one of his key weapons in ensuring he makes it into a second term in the White House.