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 ‘We’re not going anywhere’: This group of veterans warned about a second Trump term. Now they vow to hold him accountable

By Michael McElroy

January 31, 2025

Veterans for Responsible Leadership spent the 2024 election warning that Trump was a threat to the ideals service members have fought and died for. With Trump back in the White House, what does resistance look like now?

On Memorial Day weekend last year, veterans gathered at a Revolutionary War memorial in Greensboro, the site of a pivotal battle in the country’s nascent dream of escaping a tyrant. 

The American colonists memorialized there at the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park lost that battle in the Revolution, but they inflicted so much damage on the British troops that the English generals shifted tactics in the larger war, committing mistakes in the process that eventually helped Americans win at Yorktown, win the war, and win their independence.

The veterans, members of bipartisan groups of former soldiers, generals, fighter pilots, and infantrymen considered the gathering spot appropriate: Donald Trump, they said, represented the threat of a new tyrant and violated the ideals service members have fought, bled, and died for.

One of the groups, Veterans for Responsible Leadership (VFRL), spent the rest of the 2024 election sounding the same alarm to voters, emerging as a loud voice of resistance from a demographic that typically embraces Republicans over Democrats.

Their stark warning, however, didn’t land with enough voters to keep Trump from winning the election. 

Now that Trump is back in the White House, VFRL and similar groups are facing a big question with few easy answers: Now what?

For VFRL, at least, there’s a lesson in those monuments in that Greensboro park: Losing a battle does not mean conceding the fight.

“What Veterans for Responsible Leadership is all about is advocating for ethical, character-driven leadership at all levels of government,” the group’s president, Bobby Jones, said in an interview this month.

“And we will speak out …  if we believe that [elected officials] are ethically and morally compromised.”

The circumstances have changed since the election, he said, the mission has not. 

“We are not hoping that the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, fails,” Jones said, “let me start there.”

But the increasing divisiveness Trump has brought to the national discourse puts the onus on VFRL to “look for every way to try to unify and bring the country back together,” Jones, a former Navy commander, said. 

“That is what leadership is supposed to be,” he said.

‘North Carolina is by far one of our top three most active regions’

VFRL started as an informal Facebook group set up by Dan Barkhuff, a former Navy seal who is now a trauma surgeon in Colorado. Barkhuff, a registered Republican, grew the enterprise, arranging veteran events across the country and calling on Republican leaders to reject Trump’s violent rhetoric.

VFRL has more than 5,000 members across the country, but North Carolina, with its huge military footprint, “is by far one of our top three most active regions,” Jones said. 

“The amount of bases you have there, the amount of retired veterans that you have there, the relatively nice cost of living, and the style of living there appeals to a lot of veterans.”

In the Memorial Day event last year, most of the dozens of attendees and speakers were North Carolina veterans. After the event, Barkhuff, Jones, and other veterans tried to deliver an open letter to North Carolina Republicans at their state convention nearby, asking them to commit to a peaceful election. They were escorted out of the room.

The reception might not be much better moving forward.

Scott Peoples, a veteran of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and a VFRL board member, is hopeful despite the uncertainty of the coming days, months, years, he said in an interview.

“We have to be realistic now. It’s a much longer fight and a different fight than wanting to leave the world a better place for my children,” Peoples, who lives in Wake County, said.

But groups like VFRL can remind people that “there’s so many like-minded people that still love this country and love what it can be and what we strive to be,” he said. 

“We can’t give up on that.”

‘A sacred oath’

Trump and his advisors have hinted at future cuts to some veteran services and benefits that could be a significant blow to former North Carolina service members and their families. 

That is the kind thing VFRL will push against, calmly but loudly, Jones said.

“At the end of the day, you need to know how it affects you,” Jones said, imagining his group’s target audience moving forward. “The average citizen sitting there in Greensboro, North Carolina, trying to figure out ‘Why should I care if they’re going to cut VA disability benefits?’ 

He continued: “I can tell you exactly why you should care about that, because number one, you probably have a couple of veterans in your neighborhood. Number two, it’s going to [cause a] financial destabilization of their world that you eventually will have to deal with. But number three, you broke a sacred oath to those people who served.”

There are more than 615,000 veterans living in North Carolina. Nearly 30% of them  are on some form of disability, a rate nearly double the nonveteran population. 

‘We have to inspire a new generation of leaders’

Trump won in 2024, but there are more elections to come, and since authoritarianism is not only a threat at the federal level, VFRL will continue to focus on local elections and helping like-minded veterans who want to run for office, Jones said.

“We have to inspire a new generation of leaders that are morally and ethically sound,” Jones said.

The group is nonpartisan and will back candidates of any party, he said, as long as they stand for country over politics, he added.

“Everybody wants to be a leader until it’s time to do some leadership shit, … but the great secret about leadership is If you lead correctly … it’s not going to be glamorous at all. It’s a lot of sacrifice,” Jones said. 

“The American people have got to ask themselves, what are the standards that we look for in leaders in the public sphere?”

‘One of the most diverse organizations in the world’

Like on the campaign trail, Trump has also in his first weeks back in office demonized diversity efforts and immigrants, issuing several executive orders that seek to eliminate DEI initiatives from all federal programs, including the military. Pete Hegseth, who was recently confirmed as secretary of defense despite accusations of sexual assault, has said women had no place in combat.

These are not just troubling policies and philosophies, Peoples said, they are a threat to military readiness and morale.

“The military is one of the most diverse organizations in the world,” Peoples said.

“Everyone comes from all over the world. You’re Black, brown, white, but once you get into the army, everyone’s green and then everyone bleeds the same red blood,” he said.

“We had a mission that we all believed in.”

 ‘We’re not going anywhere’: This group of veterans warned about a second Trump term. Now they vow to hold him accountable

Scott Peoples of Veterans for Responsible Leadership at his home in Wake County. (Photo by Michael McElroy/Cardinal & Pine)

Attacks on DEI, Peoples added, are attacks on the soldiers themselves, and Trump’s pledge to replace seasoned military leaders with political loyalists could pit service members against one another.

“I think it’s pretty evenly split 50-50 that there are people in the military that probably are going to buy Trump’s rhetoric …  So I fear for the more marginalized people that might be serving in the military that they could come under attack from inside the ranks and really that could impact unit cohesion,” Peoples said.

“That’s definitely a worry of mine.”

‘This is the moment.’

Jones hopes the responsibilities of the office will eventually settle Trump into something less corrosive.

“I pray that the man understands the weight of the office and we start to see a turn, especially in his later years, where he thinks about legacy,” Jones said. 

“America is a big bell curve and in the middle is where most Americans are. The loudest voices are on the extremes of both side. But if president Trump moderated some of his [statements] or how he even approached and addressed them, he could become the unifier that he thinks he needs to be without necessarily compromising his political values,” Jones said.

But VFRL won’t just hold its breath or cross its fingers

For now, Jones and Peoples said, it’s about preparing for a long struggle without losing hope, perspective or patience. 

Those who see Trump as a threat may feel “battered and bruised” after the election, Peoples said, and may “feel the urge to disentangle from the fight right now.” 

But now is the time to recoup and remember the lessons of that battle in Greensboro over 240 years ago. 

“This is the moment where we have to become more engaged and just adapt and be flexible in our strategies,” he said.

“We may have lost the presidential election, but there’s a lot of wins for the pro-democracy movement in North Carolina and there’s a lot still to fight for over the next few years.”

He added: “This is what we’re here to do: stand up for what’s right and stand up for what we believe in and for our kids and their futures.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Peoples said. 

Author

  • Michael McElroy

    Michael McElroy is Cardinal & Pine's political correspondent. He is an adjunct instructor at UNC-Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and a former editor at The New York Times.

CATEGORIES: TRUMP

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