"Alarming rhetoric 'comes right out of the fascism playbook'"

 

Donald Trump told hundreds of senior military commanders Tuesday that the country is “under invasion from within” and that they should use American cities as “training grounds” to target domestic “enemies”—remarks that drew warnings of encroaching fascism as the president expands his invasion and occupation of US communities.

Speaking to nearly 800 US generals and admirals stationed around the world who were summoned to Quantico, Virginia by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a highly unusual assembly, Trump told military leaders they would be used against the American people.

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“They’re vicious people that we have to fight,” the president said, referring in this case to critical journalists, whom he called “sleazebags.”

“Just like you have to fight vicious people, mine are a different kind of vicious,” he added.

Trump then said that cities “run by the radical left Democrats... San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles” are “very unsafe places, and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one. And this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room,” he continued. “This is a war too. It’s a war from within.”

Referring to Hegseth, Trump said, “and I told Pete, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”

Responding to this, Naureen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU’s Equality Division, told Common Dreams that when Trump said, “the enemy within,” he meant “those who disagree with him.”

“We don’t need to spell out how dangerous the president’s message is, but here goes: Military troops must not police us, let alone be used as a tool to suppress the president’s critics,” Shah said. “In cities across the country, the president’s federal deployments are already creating conflict where there is none and instilling profound fear in people who are simply trying to live their lives and exercise their constitutional rights. Our country and democracy deserve far better than this.”

Trump also said during his Tuesday speech that “only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia while America is under invasion from within,” a false assertion given US imperialism and colonization, first in the Americas and then around the globe.

“We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms—at least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out; these people don’t have uniforms,” Trump said. “But we are under invasion from within; we’re stopping it very quickly.”

He then turned his attention to “radical left lunatics, that are brilliant people but dumb as hell when it comes to common sense,” falsely accusing the previous administration of opening US borders to Venezuelans after that country’s government “emptied its prison population into our country.”

In another lie, Trump said that “Washington, DC was the most unsafe, the most dangerous city in the United States of America, and to a large extent, beyond.” The president claimed that “we took out 1,700 career criminals” during his recently launched takeover of DC—almost certainly another false statement given that more than 80% of arrests made in the capital were for misdemeanor offenses, many of them immigration-related.

Trump said US troops are “following in a great and storied military tradition” of presidents who have deployed military forces against “domestic” enemies.

“Today, I want to thank every service member from general to private who’s helped secure the nation’s capital and make America safe for the American people,” he said, adding in another blatant lie that “we haven’t had a crime in Washington in so long.”

“We’re going into Chicago very soon,” he said, although Operation Midway Blitz is already underway in the city.

“How about Portland?” he asked, adding in a comment utterly divorced from reality that the laconic Oregon city “looks like a war zone.” Trump ordered troops to invade Portland despite the city ranking 72nd in violent crime in the US, according to FBI data.

In an apparent moment of doubt, Trump asked during a Sunday NBC News interview, “Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?”

Recounting how Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek asked Trump to not deploy federal forces to Portland, Trump said during Tuesday’s speech that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”

Amid small-scale protests in Portland over Trump’s authoritarian Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown, Fox News aired a report conflating video footage from 2020 protests against the police murder of George Floyd with the recent images. Anti-ICE protesters have burned an American flag and set small street fires in Portland, but no structures have been burned down.

Trump also said that any anti-ICE protesters who throw objects at federal vehicles or agents can be met with unlimited force. “You get out of that car, and you can do whatever the hell you want to do,” the president said.

Critics swiftly pushed back on Trump’s suggestion of using American cities as military “training grounds.” Congressman Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a former Marine Corps combat veteran who served multiple tours during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, said on the social media site X that “today’s speeches by Trump and Hegseth were weak portrayals of ‘leadership’ by two small, insecure men.”

“US cities should never be ‘training grounds’ for the military,” Moulton added. “There is no ‘enemy from within.’ The reputational and operational damage being done to our military will take years to undo.” The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State said on social media, “This is authoritarian, unconstitutional, and a direct threat to our democracy.”

Chris Rilling, a former senior official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said on X: “Trump should be impeached for this statement alone. Period.”

Some legal experts noted that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

Leaders of the Not Above the Law Coalition—which includes progressive groups such as Public Citizen, MoveOn, and Stand-Up America—called Trump’s remarks “deeply un-American.”

“This dangerous rhetoric delivered during an unprecedented gathering reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of our military’s purpose and the people it serves,” the coalition co-chairs said. “Make no mistake: This isn’t about public safety—it’s about turning our own military into a force to be used against Trump’s perceived political opponents or anyone who questions his administration.”

“Americans cannot stay silent when our leaders express plans to use our military against us,” they added. “We must reject any attempt to normalize this outrageous and unlawful directive.”

Observers abroad also expressed shock at Trump’s remarks.

“In Trump’s speech today, Trump mentioned something very dangerous: using US cities (Democrat-run, I bet) as US troops training ground,” said José Antonio Salcedo, a professor at University of Porto in Portugal. “This is definitely contrary to the US Constitution.”

“It comes right out of the fascism playbook that Project 2025 and its fringe lunatic authors have been advocating and planning,” he added. “Wake up, people, the US is fast approaching a point of no return.”

-Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams