Former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus called out President Donald Trump for his pardons of war criminals and very public meddling in military justice affairs, which culminated over the weekend with an embarrassing departure of one of the president’s highest ranking military officials.

Richard Spencer, Trump’s Navy Secretary, was ousted on Sunday in a chaotic series of events, in which he left behind a blistering resignation letter that said he could no longer in good conscience follow the president’s orders. He has since gone further in publicly criticizing Trump’s judgment. However, Defense Secretary Mark Esper claimed that Spencer did not resign, but was instead fired for going behind his back to Trump. The issue in dispute involved Trump’s anger that Navy commanders’ were pursuing a review of Chief Eddie Gallagher’s SEAL status, a decision Trump blasted as “very unfair,” even though the special operator was convicted on a bad conduct charge in July,

“Everything you see is bad. You can’t spin this in a good way,” Mabus told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “Throw accountability out of the window. Throw military justice out the window. Dishonor the tens of thousands of Americans who have served in both these theaters and served well and didn’t think it was necessary to break the law or commit war crimes.”

“If you can reach down and tell a unit like the SEALs,” Mabus continued, “I’m going to decide who’s in your unit, I’m going to to decide who’s got the right to be there. I’m not going to let your peers decide. I’m not going to let your commanders decide.”

“[Trump has this sort of juvenile comic book 13-year-old vision” of the military, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said.

“Rambo, it’s Rambo,” Matthews summed up. He then pointed to how the US followed the Geneva Conventions during World War II while the Nazis were committing atrocities and war crimes.

“And that set us apart,” Mabus noted. “The fact that we did obey the law. We did try to do these things in the right way, not just to win but win in the right way. Again, [Trump’s] throwing this out the window. We don’t have the moral high ground anymore, I think to your point. We’re putting our people at risk, putting our troops at risk by doing this.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

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