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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday delivered a speech to the nation’s top generals and admirals that laid out his plans to re-envision the military as a ruthless fighting force that has no place for rules and norms like equal opportunity for women or even tolerance for “fat generals.”
“You kill people and break things for a living,” Hegseth said. “You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong, always, in polite society.”
Hegseth went on to say that the military would no longer be restrained by “stupid rules of engagement” — including, apparently, at home.
That chilling speech was followed by an even scarier one from Trump himself. After encouraging the conspicuously silent assembly of military leaders to applaud for him if they felt so inclined, Trump laid out a lawless, authoritarian vision for the armed forces, including fighting a “war from within” against the his domestic enemies.
In other words, boots on the ground — in places like Portland, not Pyongyang.
“Our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies foreign and domestic,” Trump told the generals and admirals in attendance. “That’s what the oath says — foreign and domestic. Well, we also have domestic.”
Trump went on to suggest that active-duty troops should train for combat in places like Chicago. The president also told the nation’s top brass that some US cities should be considered hostile territory.
“They’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” Trump said of US cities, singling out San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. “This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s war from within.”
If all that weren’t enough, Trump touted an executive order that created a National Guard strike force the administration is standing up to respond to events of civil unrest, telling military leaders that it will “be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”
“It won’t get out of control once you get involved at all,” Trump added.
Trump has long desired to send military troops to Democratic cities — an authoritarian aspiration that is accompanied by his fantasy of having soldiers shoot protesters. (Hegseth has signaled willingness to have soldiers kill Americans.)
The president and his former Fox News host defense secretary already made their wish for domestic deployment of soldiers a reality when, in June, Hegseth ordered Marines to be deployed to Los Angeles to assist immigration agents in enforcement operations there. Trump federalized members of the California National Guard in his military push into LA, prompting a federal judge to declare that the administration had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement.
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