President says US cities should be 'training grounds' for military in incendiary speech

President Donald Trump said yesterday that the United States faces a "war from within" from crime and immigration, in a darkly authoritarian speech to a rare meeting of the top US military officers.

- George Chidi and agencies

Addressing generals and admirals summoned from around the world by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, Trump, the Republican president, warned that the military would be involved in his crackdowns on a number of Democratic-run cities.

“We're going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too - it's a war from within,” Trump said in front of a huge US flag in Quantico, Virginia.

“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, that's a big city with an incompetent governor,” Trump said, attacking Illinois governor JB Pritzker.