President Donald Trump told top military brass on Tuesday that American cities run by Democrats should serve as “training grounds” for troops as the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a highly anticipated meeting with more than 800 leaders in Virginia.

“I told Pete,” referring to Hegseth, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” Trump said. “The ones that are run by radical left Democrats — what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one. This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s war from within.”

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The president has already demonstrated an eagerness to deploy troops against U.S. citizens, including deployments of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles earlier this year.

During his speech, Trump said, “we’re going into Chicago very soon,” something he’s threatened before without acting on.

Trump’s comments came after Hegseth summoned the top U.S. military officials to an in-person meeting to announce directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness as well as an end to “woke” culture in the military.

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.

He said he’s loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections.

Hegseth and Trump abruptly called military leaders from around the world to convene at a base in Virginia without publicly revealing the reason until Tuesday morning. While meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, experts say the scale of the gathering, the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it are particularly unusual.

Although the military is designed to handle foreign threats, the president emphasized his vision of using it for domestic purposes.

“It’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” he said.

Trump’s remarks referred to criminals and immigrants who are in the country illegally. He also complained about “insurrectionists” who are funded by “the radical left.”

“Many of our leaders used our military to keep peace,” he said.