(By
Sabrina Haake, Raw Story, 15 June 2025)
Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recounted how, during a White House
meeting in 2020, Trump looked at Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and
asked why he couldn’t just shoot protesters, adding, “It was (both) a
suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that
moment as this issue hung very heavily in the air.”
Milley pushed back on that suggestion and other illegal
Trump impulses, eventually leading Trump to call for Milley’s execution and revoke
his security detail. During Trump 1.0, Trump apparently
suggested shooting protesters enough times that Esper issued a public statement opposing the use of the Insurrection
Act against protesters, enraging Trump.
Trump made sure that would not happen again in his second
administration by appointing a dangerously unqualified defense secretary with
few moral qualms. As a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s desire to deploy the military against protesters.
He defended war criminals who ‘killed the right people in the wrong ways,’ advocating
“total war against our enemies… All of ’em, you stack bodies, and when it’s
over, then you let the dust settle and you figure out who’s ahead.”
A trillion-dollar defense budget to kill whom, exactly?
Even though the U.S. is not at war, and Trump has
shamefully abandoned our NATO military alliances, Hegseth waxes hard
on “lethality,” and rails against “woke” laws that punish
soldiers for indiscriminate killings. Trump/Hegseth seek a trillion-dollar defense budget, not to
defend America from foreign enemies who are now Trump’s mentors, but to attack
“enemies within,” i.e., Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda.
None of this, including Trump’s
deliberate escalation of violence in LA, was unforeseen. Who can forget
how Kamala
Harris was panned as histrionic when she said Trump would sic
the military on U.S. citizens, following his promise to do just that? In
October, 2024, Trump said he’d use the military against the biggest
threat to America — Americans who don’t support him.
“I think the (main problem we face) is the enemy from
within,” Trump said, adding: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick
people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be
very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really
necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
It’s galling that no congressman has connected the dots and asked about explosive military spending that Trump/Hegseth have signaled will be used against Americans. As of this writing, Trump has not declared martial law, but recent Trump history, paired with his glaring mental illness, suggests it’s “when,” not “if.”
Trump’s plan to use troops to impose his domestic agenda is decidedly
un-American. Today it includes deportations and manufacturing civil unrest;
tomorrow, Trump’s goons will round up journalists who criticize him, judges,
Democrats, and political opponents, as
just happened Thursday when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was tackled to
the ground for trying to ask Kristi Noem questions.
If you have any doubt, watch
Trump’s illegal and partisan address at Ft. Bragg, where he led troops in
uniform to wildly “boo” journalists, California’s governor, and LA’s mayor. If
you have any lingering naivety, still hoping soldiers will honor their oaths
and not follow America’s Hitler, that speech will erase it.
For now, Trump is acting in LA pursuant to a presidential memorandum deploying the National Guard
under a rarely used federal law, 10
U.S.C. § 12406. Under that code, a president possesses the power to
federalize the National Guard only when there is “a rebellion or danger of
rebellion” against federal authority, or when the president cannot execute
federal laws. As Trump sees it, this assessment depends on his own untrained
and undisciplined opinion. Under that statute, however, the National Guard can only support other law
enforcement officers and defend federal property.
The Posse Comitatus Act also remains in effect,
prohibiting the use of the military as a domestic law enforcement agency,
except in extraordinary circumstances not yet present in LA despite Trump’s
best efforts. The Insurrection Act of 1807, the authority under which Hegseth
sent active Marines to LA, is a broader set of statutes granting Trump the
power to use military force in specific circumstances, including suppressing
armed rebellion, civil disorder, or other extreme circumstances where
the states are unable to maintain public order.
Gov. Gavin Newsom formally objected to Trump sending troops,
because California in general, and LAPD in particular, have sufficient resources to maintain
order. Newsom knows that when US Marines start shooting civilians, whether in
LA, Chicago, or New York, violence will ratchet up to the necessary threshold
to circumvent Posse Comitatus and allow Trump to declare martial law.
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