Trump faces his generals

When President Donald Trump dropped the bizarre suggestion last week that the military should use American cities as “training grounds” to fight what he called “an enemy within,” it sounded almost like old news.

- Clarence Page

After all, Trump has talked like this for years.

“Don’t take him literally,” some would say. Or, that’s just Trump being Trump.

Yet for the past couple of months, Trump has been foreshadowing the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago and Portland. As I write this, citizens of those cities are watching and waiting for it to happen, just as he sent troops to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis, purportedly to crack down on crime and support immigration enforcement.

But there was a distinct difference in gravity to Trump’s rambling at Quantico. He was making his suggestion to a highly unusual gathering of hundreds of the nation’s top military leaders — admirals, generals, top sergeants — who were summoned from around the world, on short notice, to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for a purpose most could only guess before the meeting.

Trump, a late addition to the program, apparently could not pass up an opportunity to address military commanders on national television — and appeared to be visibly thrown off guard by the absence of applause.