the actual piece goes into a lot of detail about modly's view of the crozier's missteps but imho the first part of the piece frankly says it all https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/05/acting-navy-chief-fired-crozier-panicking-before-trump-might-intervene/

He fired Crozier because he was afraid that Trump would get personally involved in a military matter below flag officer rank.

This is not an opinion, this is Modly's own words, in a phone call to David Ignatius.

Since 2017, I've gradually lost patience for "nuance." A lot of the times, the simplest reaction you have is correct.

The President is unfit to command. His presence creates a distorting effect that compromises the web of institutions that surround him. Many of those institutions were not well to begin with. But nonetheless...

....here you see a great example. Modly is saying he was afraid that the President would lose his temper, start tweeting, and then personally intervene to throw the captain overboard.

After this admission, almost everything else afterwards about what Crozier should or shouldn't have done, the military chain of command, etc just become superfluous bullshit

Normally, these things would matter a great deal. Reasonable people could have a nuanced discussion about them. Here, the issue is far more black and white.

Because it reduces down to Modly's understandable need to appease an insecure narcissist who fired his predecessor, a factor that overrides all of the technical details about the nature of military obedience and the correct course of action during crises like COVID-19

Put bluntly, suppose that a Army or Marine E-5 gets on the news and it displeases the President for some arbitrary reason. Twitter fingers start getting itchy. Looks like someone is getting an early retirement!