“The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within,” Adm. William H. McRaven, who led the U.S. Special Operations Command before retiring, wrote in the New York Times Thursday describing the mood at two functions he attended in the span of a week — one at an Army change of command ceremony and the other a gala honoring members of the intelligence and Special Operations communities.

Recalling a conversation he had while attending a ceremony at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, McRaven wrote, “one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, ‘I don’t like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!’”