DEMOCRACY WATCHTrump: American Cities Are “Training Grounds” for the U.S. Military
President Trump told generals and admirals that “straightening out” Democratic-run cities will be a “major part” of their mission going forward. Fighting Democratic-run cities is “a war too,” Trump said. “It’s a war from within.”
U.S. generals and admirals were summoned from around the world to Quantico, Virginia for what they assumed would be the unveiling of a new national security strategy.
It was nothing of the sort.
Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, and Shawn McCreesh report in the New York Times:
In the end, it was just another campaign-style presentation. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recited a familiar litany of partisan culture war talking points in their highly anticipated call-up of several hundred military officers on Tuesday.
But in a rambling and sometimes incoherent speech in which he praised his own tariffs and insulted former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump disclosed that he had told Mr. Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military.
It was an evolution of one of Mr. Trump’s favorite themes — that cities run by Democrats are lawless, urban hellscapes. But now he was telling military commanders charged with waging war his thinking on where their next deployments could be.
“It seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places,” the president told the generals and admirals at a military base in Virginia. “And we’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room.”
“That’s a war too,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a war from within.”
