Posted on 07/11/2025 5:16:57 AM PDT by DFG
The Defense Department is withdrawing the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly, The Daily Wire can first report, under whose command drag performances took place on board the USS Ronald Reagan.
Donnelly served as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier from April 2016 to September 2018, during which time Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley performed as a drag queen under the name “Harpy Daniels” at a department-sanctioned “Morale, Welfare, and Recreation” event on the aircraft carrier.
The Defense Department announced on June 18 that President Donald Trump had nominated Donnelly for promotion to vice admiral and an appointment as commander of the 7th Fleet, the largest overseas force that the Navy has.
Following inquiries from The Daily Wire about Donnelly and the drag queen shows he permitted on board the USS Ronald Reagan, a source at the Defense Department said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is withdrawing Donnelly’s nomination to lead the 7th Fleet.
Hegseth is looking for a new 7th Fleet commander, the source shared.
Donnelly drew national attention in 2023 when Sen. Tommy Tuberville held up his promotion to rear admiral as part of his blockade on Defense Department promotions. The Alabama Republican was fighting President Joe Biden’s policy providing three weeks of paid leave and reimbursement of travel expenses for military personnel and their dependents who wanted abortions.
Tuberville argued that the policy was one of many taxpayer-funded Defense Department initiatives unrelated to the agency’s mission of protecting the United States. He called on the former Navy leadership in a May 2023 letter to name the officers responsible for funding and promoting drag queen performances.
A number of legacy media outlets, including NBC and the Military Times, had highlighted the drag shows that occurred during Donnelly’s tour.
“Navy drag queen ‘Harpy Daniels’ is serving looks — and the country,” NBC headlined their story. The Military Times report was replete with photos of Kelley in drag, including one where he is doing a split in front of his fellow service members.
This type of significant press attention would have been “a standard reporting requirement directly to Captain Donnelly at the time,” William Thibeau, director of The American Military Project at The Claremont Institute, told The Daily Signal at the time.
“Every military officer takes command of units large and small with the understanding they are responsible for everything that does and does not happen under their command,” Thibeau explained in 2023. “It’s the basic truth of military leadership, whether you command an infantry company or an aircraft carrier.”
“The USS Ronald Reagan drag shows of 2017 and 2018 were not random acts of entertainment for sailors, but were sanctioned Navy programs under the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) department of the ship,” he noted. “As commander of the ship, Captain Donnelly would have been ultimately responsible for this program.”
Donnelly is a 2002 graduate of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and served as commanding officer for Strike Fighter Squadron 154 (VFA-154), the last commanding officer of USS Denver deployed to Sasebo, Japan, commanding officer of USS Ronald Reagan deployed to Yokosuka, Japan and commander of Task Force Seven Zero/Carrier Strike Group Five.
There’s a larger story being overlooked here, IMO. How did this guy make it past O-6 with the drag queen show occurring in the first Trump Administration? Something should have been placed in his file then that would have ended his career before screening for a flag officer promotion. The extension of this same line of thinking is to question how Hegseth let this get past his desk & into a packet for Trump’s approval.
Always thought “bending over the barrel” was a longtime Navy tradition. Spending all that time out on the oceans, without a woman in sight, etc.
Seems like the A’miral must gave taken South Pacific too seriously.
Is the admiral a poofter?
“In WWII, it was considered a JOKE, not FORCED INDOCTRINATION of perversion.”
Exactly...
Maybe it was the grammar that threw you off.
In your photograph, I looked at the black woman dressed in jeans - far right. Who is she? Is she a sailor? If a sailor, why is she dressed in civilian clothes? If a sailor, how does she pass the PRT? Considering the “audience,” was an order given to attend this show? If not, then - in my opinion - all these sailors are guilty of promoting sexual perversion.
Making fun of and dressing up like Milton Berle or Corporal Klinger, is not the same as a fruitcake having a sideline career as an actual drag queen. Every high school talent show used to have members of the football team put on dresses, smear lipstick on and do some silly clod hopper imitation of a dance, for laughs, for ridicule. The “drag queens” of today are an whole other animal.
My comment is off-topic of this post and more on the novel “Moby Dick.” I read that book several years ago and it was several weeks of slogging through the text. The book is held up as a symbol of great American literature; yet the book contained a lot of long “paragraphs” of run-on sentences. Everything taught concerning grammar was thrown out the window concerning this book.
Getting rid of him took too long. At least he is gone now.
>> I found it interesting to look at the faces in the background in this image as a general indicator of the internal support in the military for this kind of crap...anyone notice a trend?
Good point well made, LOL! The “brothas” at the left appear particularly unamused.
>> This Admiral getting canned is a sign of health returning, not a sign of sickness.
A-MEN to that!
Apparently we need to bring back the lash...
They like that though.
Rear Adm. Buzz. This is the umpteenth play on words this morning.
Keel-hauled on the Nimitz.
“”””Nothing new, there are lots of photos of similar activities during WWII aboard ships and in POW camps.””””
You can see the 1939 difference in posts 33 and 35 on my father’s ship.
I admit, in his case, he seems to be enjoying it a bit much, but...as you say...it looks more like a diversion from pathos.
And with duty like that, who wouldn't look for diversion?
LOL, I think that is true. Who knows what they allow on board nowadays, though when I was in back in the Seventies, I took my skis, boots and poles aboard and stowed them in the overhead piping and nobody gave me a hard time.
Of course...it wasn’t heels and fishnets!
Whoever brought his name forth in the first place should be throughly vetted themselves. Why didn’t they find this out prior to nominating him, and if they did know, and went ahead with it, they need to go too.
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