On Tuesday, President Trump addressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his war secretary, and senior commanders (transcript is available here) at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The session was convened to review military readiness, budget priorities, and upcoming initiatives. The agenda included new weapons programs, expanded force structure, and the administration’s shift in doctrine under the restored name “Department of War.” It was both a policy briefing and a directive, outlining the missions Trump expects the armed forces to undertake in the coming year.
However, the most striking element of the address was not the budget figures or hardware announcements, but the language Trump used to describe the nation’s internal situation. He warned that America is under assault, not from abroad but from within:
We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways…
The military, he stressed, should defend not only the nation’s borders but its streets, treating domestic disturbances as a theater of war.
D.C. as a Case Study
Trump held up Washington, D.C., as a proof of concept for his vision of military intervention in American cities. On August 11, he signed Executive Order 14333 placing the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under federal control. The order also mobilized the D.C. National Guard under federal command and called in Guard units from other states to “augment the mission.” Trump justified the takeover by citing a “crime emergency,” even though both independent and official data (see here and here) showed violent crime in the capital was already at or near a 30-year low.
Hellbound and Down 