Even before Navy Secretary Richard Spencer’s forced ouster this weekend, a handful of the Pentagon’s highest-ranking officials have been debating just when they would feel compelled to resign over what they see as Trump’s disregard for the chain of command, two current senior officials told POLITICO in recent days. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

“There’s a sense of dejection by senior leaders in the Pentagon, that the president and the secretary of defense are going to side with the loudmouths at Fox News against the reasoned opposition of senior military professionals,” said another Pentagon official with direct knowledge of high-level discussions. “That’s the sense in a nutshell.”…

Yet the incident was just the latest collision between Trump and the Pentagon leaders, following incidents in which the president ignored or overruled their advice not to withdraw troops from Syria, ban transgender people from serving or redirect military forces and funding to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has also weighed in publicly on individual military procurement projects — such as criticizing a potential $10 billion Pentagon contract for Amazon, which Esper subsequently awarded to Microsoft — and demanded that the Navy switch back to old-fashioned steam catapults for its next generation of aircraft carriers.