Trump says US cities should be military ‘training grounds’ • FRANCE 24 English

Trump says US cities should be military ‘training grounds’ • FRANCE 24 English

This is Acropo. America is under invasion from within. Donald Trump has been emphasizing his vision of using the US armed forces for domestic purposes after summoning hundreds of senior military officers to an unusual gathering in Virginia. In a rambling address, the president said several democratic run cities would be used as training grounds for the armed forces while his defense secretary claimed that the military was too focused on woke ideas, saying it needed a major shakeup. Carris Garland has the details. We became the woke department, but not anymore. Setting the tone for a rare call up of top US military brass from across the globe, Defense Secretary Pete Hgse declared an end to quote politically correct leadership that he said had infected his department. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that The Pentagon has undergone radical changes since Donald Trump took office, including firings and banning books from academy libraries. Hegath defended his firing of more than a dozen military leaders, saying they were part of a broken culture. He also announced a tightening of fitness and grooming standards. It’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Simply put, if you do not meet the male level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position. Donald Trump, who only announced the previous day that he would speak at the event, told reporters as he was leaving that he would fire military leaders on the spot if he didn’t like them. The president then opened with a joke as he took the stage. You can do anything you want and if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. In a rambling speech, Trump praised his own tariff and border policies, but he also spoke of his administration’s plans to send National Guard troops to a host of US cities after an initial operation in Washington DC, signaling a revamp of defense priorities. The president cited an invasion and enemy from within. We are under invasion from within. We’re stopping it very quickly. Washington DC went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month. The president has been questioned over the cost of flying the military commanders to the meeting as a federal shutdown looms. Though Trump defended it as a good thing. Well, for more, we’re joined now by Mark Canian, retired Marine Colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks so much for being with us on the program. We saw there Donald Trump talking about a war with from within when he’s talking about crime and immigration in the US. Observers describing all of that as darkly authoritarian. What did you make of it? This is the standard uh Trump speech. He gives the same speech to every audience whether it’s senior military officers, whether it’s a campaign rally or whether it’s the general uh assembly of the United Nations. Uh so what he said was not unexpected. It was quite uh inappropriate for a group of military offers. But I said this is what this is a standard speech. He gives that to to everyone. And this rhetoric about uh attacks from within about uh domestic terrorism that is also standard Trump. He has signed executive orders designating uh cartels and uh in uh uh domestic terrorism uh as terrorism threats uh and vanta. So uh that was not a surprise. The one thing that caught everyone’s attention was this statement about combat training in the cities. Yeah. And those will those commanders be concerned at all by some of the remarks that they heard today particularly when it comes to having those troops in in democratic run cities. The troops are going to a variety of city most of which are democratic run but not all of them. U so far it’s been uh okay from the military point of view huge issues on a domestic political policy perspective. um what Trump meant by this statement, which was really an off-handed comment in the middle of this, as you described, very rambling uh uh speech. Uh what he meant was unclear. You know, taken one way, it could mean the authorization for the use of lethal force. That would be a huge problem because the military is not trained on dealing with citizens, on dealing uh uh using uh lethal force against US citizens. That’s the job of law enforcement. Uh on the other hand, uh uh he could just be talking about, you know, deploying to other cities, doing uh jobs in another location. For example, if you’re a truck driver doing truck driving uh driving trucks in, uh Portland uh or Memphis rather than on your home base, that would uh not be concerning. What the military has done in cities so far has been relatively benign. That is they haven’t used mil uh lethal force. Uh they’ve let uh police do the law enforcement. They’ve backed up police and done a variety of support jobs including here in Washington DC uh doing landscaping. So we’ll see how Secretary Hegsth implements this and whether it’s some matter for concern or whether it’s more of what we’ve been seeing. Um is there a lot of dis discomfort and unease within the ranks of the military itself about what the Trump administration’s policies are when it comes to the armed forces and perhaps the challenges that lay lay ahead. Would not overestimate the um unease in the military uh ranks. U what we saw here I think sums up what they’ve been seeing that is a lot of what he said resonates well. I mean when he talks about excellence, when he talks about high standards, uh when he talks about uh fitness that resonates with senior officers and so far many of the missions are not things that you know the military would uh probably have chosen uh but they’re within what the military has done in the past. So I think the concerns are about where it might go rather than what they’re actually uh doing now. And what did you make of Pete Hegath’s comments about competence having to meet the highest standards, male standards particularly, when it comes to physical fitness tests? Does that mean that women in the future are not going to be able to serve as he’s almost acknowledged in those remarks? Seth would say no. And uh his uh argument is that when he speaks about the highest male standards, he’s talking about particularly combat units that is uh the infantry. Uh he makes the argument, not an unreasonable one, that everyone should meet the same standard and it should be a high standard because of the demands of combat troops. What when you talk about support troops, it’s different. the the uh physical demands are not as uh high and those are uh demands that women could relatively easily meet and there’ll be some women in the infantry who continue to meet their standards. There are some very tough women out there probably just not as many uh as maybe before. And why did the US president do you think want to have all these senior personnel in the one place? And why was there so much secrecy about what was going to be discussed and so much speculation in advance of this gathering? Well, those are great questions and I think many people got to the end of these two speeches and were scratching their heads saying, “Why did they all have to come to Quantico to hear this? It was all unclassified. They could have done this uh on a classified uh video teleconference. They could have even done it on Zoom because there was no uh classified information. Uh the Pentagon put out a reason. They said that Secretary Higs wanted to see his commanders face to face. Uh people have also speculated he did it because he can. He’s a secretary and if he says come to me, you know, the officers uh come. Keep in mind this this was Secretary Heg’s meeting that he called. The president was a a lastm minute literally almost uh addition to the meeting. And you say the scale, the timeline, the lack of a clear agenda in advance, they were all unprecedented. So just how unusual was this gathering in and of itself? Well, it was unprecedented and as you say, three things made it unprecedented. One was the size. You could see the size of that auditorium. These are hundreds of the most senior military officers along with their senior uh enlisted adviserss. There have been many um routine meetings of general officers, but they’re much smaller. The combatant commanders, for example, come to Washington twice a year. There are 11 of them, not 2, three, 400. The other thing was the short timeline. This uh was maybe discussed on classified systems for a couple of weeks out but they came together very uh quickly. Typically uh conferences like this particular general office are are planned months even years uh in advance. And then there was the lack of an agenda and what we saw was what happens if you don’t put an agenda out there. A lot of people filled in that agenda with ideas about officer purges. um talk about a the blood wedding you with um um um you know the firing of officers and possibly um requirements for loyalty oaths. None of that happened. Uh but you know there was a lot of specul. So you put those three things together this was unprecedented. And what about the optics Mark with the federal shutdown looming in the US? What about the cost of flying all of these commanders in to Virginia and the disruption if there was any to daily operations? First question on costs has come up uh particularly for people who question the um need for such a conference. I did a rough calculation and I think the costs are in the sort of 6 to8 million range um in addition to some opportunity costs. Now, compared to a federal budget of a trillion dollars, that’s not very much. Uh, on the other hand, if you think that this meeting was unnecessary, then it’s a very uh high amount. You also raise, it’s a question about bringing all these officers to Quantico and what that does to commands around the world, and it does disrupt them, and there’s a little risk that goes with it. Although I would not overemphasize it, officers uh came here. Uh, their deputies stepped up. Their deputies are very highly qualified. And these officers go out of town frequently. So it’s not unusual that the deputy would take over. The little risk that occurs is because it’s happened globally and acting commanders are often a bit hesitant to make big decisions because they want to leave those uh to the actual commander. So there’s a little risk. I wouldn’t overemphasize it. and at a time of obviously global concern about actual conflicts in many regions around the world. Why this focus when it comes to the Trump administration on the culture wars? It’s something we see time and time again with Donald Trump. Pegs sees these two issues as related. He re sees the culture wars as strengthening um the war fighting uh capabilities of the military. He wants to focus the military as he says on uh war fighting on standards on training. Uh so to him it’s all the same uh effort. Mark thanks so much for being with us this evening. We do appreciate your time. That’s Mark Canian, retired Marine Colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thank you.

US President Donald Trump told a rare meeting of top military officers on Tuesday that the country faces a “war from within” and suggested American cities be used as “training grounds” for troops. FRANCE 24’s Sharon Gaffney speaks with Mark Cancian, Retired Marine Colonel and Senior Adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
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