Trump’s unlawful call for ‘war’ on citizens met with stony silence from generals 

Today, the president made what are widely called unusual, perhaps unprecedented remarks in the modern era. And I'm going to show you exactly what he said and why military veterans and many other experts on a nonpartisan basis say this is one of those inflection points you need to confront. It is unusual to gather this many members of the military in peacetime.

The president made this public address so everyone can see and hear what he is saying to the military. And he explicitly said this military under this Trump administration must better focus on attacking, quote, the enemy within. And as for the controversial and sometimes legally overruled use of the just the National Guard in America, the president rhetorically pushing past that,

explaining that he views the military, which we'll show you was quite careful to be quiet during what were widely seen as partisan remarks, he will use the military on American cities for what he calls a training ground for a new type of war. Now some of this may be rhetoric alone. There is always a difference when you observe and cover the government between what politicians say

and what they do. If we were covering this speech for you tonight and there had not been the deployment of National Guard and other federal forces in the nation's capital in California and skirmishes over it in many other places, it would look different.

But our job is to report to you what the president is saying and what he is doing, what he is trying to get away with, sometimes under very pitched court battles. The context here, hundreds of generals and admirals were summoned at a cost of many millions of dollars from their posts around the world to hear the president. Now, again, in all fairness, although that itself is unusual, the president can do that. He is commander in chief and he may have reasons, policy or otherwise, that he wants to summon them.

And had this been a normal address about patriotism or readiness or even foreign policy goals, people could debate it. But that would be a more conventional use of the commander-in-chief powers. Instead, he used those powers, summoning these people up up and down the rank, to talk politics, to talk partisanship, to talk about how he wants to use the military on you, if you are watching this inside America. That of course breaks with a long part long nonpartisan tradition of how to address the military.

There's also the discussion in here that the Pentagon should regard U.S. cities as, quote, a big part of war.

Portland Oregon, where it looks like a war zone. They're brave in our inner cities, which we're going to be talking about because it's a big part of war now. It's a big part of war. The radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,

they're very unsafe places. And we're going to straighten them out one by one. We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, national guard, but military. Because we're going into Chicago very soon.

The president making a wholly unprecedented claim that the military should use cities where Americans live as, quote, training grounds. Now, again, in all fairness, a sitting president has every right to talk about crime in the country and how to deal with it. Most of that's dealt with at the local level. Police tend to be part of your local government.

That's why if you are in trouble, you're usually dealing with the police, right? You're not dealing with the FBI, but there are times where there are federal crimes as well. President is well within his grounds in general to talk about trying to lower crime in America. But having the US military do it and call it war?

Way out of bounds. The Washington Post reporting this new speech marks the first time President Trump publicly directed military leaders to be a major part of fighting a war from within US cities. If we get to a wartime footing,

if we see this president trying to summon war powers in our country, don't say he didn't warn you. And don't say you didn't hear about it if you're reasonably informed. You can watch it on the news or read it on your phone. But we have been warned. It's not happening in a vacuum. The president has already sent, as mentioned, all kinds of federal agents and troops into various places, sometimes masked agents carrying out lawful immigration authorities, but in unusual ways, sometimes military troops to Los Angeles, again, partly overruled in the courts and in our nation's capital, where there's a time limit he may yet test under

law, and vowing, as you heard just there, to do more of this in the coming days. People close to Trump and former aides say this is part of something he is planning to test or abuse national emergency powers in the future to distort elections or potentially try to reverse an outcome. And before you say, well, that sounds like a hypothetical, the president, current President Trump lost one election and he did not leave peacefully.

We all lived through that. This was a vindictive tone from the president today. I'll let you hear it for yourself as he insists U.S. troops should now target Americans, which he calls, again, the politician, his opinion, he calls them the domestic enemy.

Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. While America is under invasion from within within 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 But we are under invasion from within

The president making a claim there that is essentially false. Rhetorically, as a matter of language, you can't be under invasion from within. As a matter of foreign policy, you have to identify a foreign threat, usually a country, sometimes what they call a non-state actor. But it's a foreign threat, not fellow Americans. Now, what you see here is important. The assembled generals, admirals and others there were respectful, but silent.

Under military protocol, anything deemed a partisan or political address or claim, unlike, say, the Pledge of Allegiance, will be met with silence. And just about everyone in that room, best we could tell from our reporting, met that standard. Indeed, for Donald Trump, who so assiduously courts political audiences,

holds more rallies than others, he was unaccustomed to a room this silent, and he felt the need to note it while also issuing a statement that I'll let you assess for yourself. I've never walked into a room so silent before. This is very, don't laugh, don't laugh, you're not allowed to do that. You know what, just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, 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. There goes your rank and future if you leave the room.

A fact check. The president said, if you want to applaud, applaud, as if it is a personal choice. And that may have just been a sentence, a slip of the tongue, but fact check false. Under the military rules, it is not about the personal agreement or whether you choose or want to cheer or not. Like many other rules in our nonpartisan military, it's not about the person. It is about a wider vow to defend the country

and the Constitution. You cannot cheer political remarks in uniform, period. I want to bring in Paul Rakoff, who's the founder and CEO of Independent Veterans of America, host of the Independent Americans podcast, and someone who has, through his service and his advocacy, been a leading voice on civil military relations

for some time now. Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

What about this speech was traditional under the rules and what departed from the rules? Just starting there.

Nothing about it was traditional. The entire thing is unprecedented. We didn't gather all our senior military leaders after 9-11. So there is no precedent for this. And I think that's really important to frame what is the latest step in the removal of the guardrails that protect the politicization of our military.

I've said for weeks, and especially right now, the most important story in America and in the world is that Donald Trump can do whatever he wants with the greatest military the world has ever seen. That includes bombing Iran. That includes hitting ships off the coast of Venezuela. It includes sending troops into American cities,

now like Portland. And it includes bringing together over 800 generals from around the world for what turned into a very overtly inappropriate, unacceptable political speech that was bookended by kind of a culture war TED talk from Pete Hegseth, who is hollow, who is fragile.

And I think it was a very deep low point, not just for our military, but for our democracy.

And the president says, oh you can applaud if you want to and agree, but that's not what the military rules say.

Right, and I think if there's a silver lining, the discipline and military bearing of the generals in that room is it. They did not applaud. They held their bearing. Most of them didn't want to be there and know this is inappropriate and unacceptable. They showed up, and they spoke volumes with their silence. But there's an important point here. They got what they wanted.

Trump and Hexheth got what they wanted, which was the content and the giant photo op. The audience was not the generals in the room. The audience was the American public. The audience was the American public. Right. generals in the room. The audience was the American public. The audience was the world.