Unrestrained Trump turns to military in second-term power play
U.S. President Donald Trump's moves to deploy troops to Los Angeles and hold a splashy parade on the Army's 250th birthday fulfills his longtime goal of leaning on the military for a show of force and political power.
Stymied in his first term by Cabinet members who resisted the use of soldiers on American soil, Trump has a more compliant team around him this time. After sending in the National Guard this weekend, he escalated his showdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday by mobilizing 700 active-duty Marines, a decision that Newsom called a "provocation.'
Late Monday, Trump went even further, authorizing an additional 2,000 National Guard members to deploy there, bringing the total to 4,000, not including the Marines.
The deployments, coupled with plans for a parade for June 14 — another wish abandoned in his first term — shift attention back to immigration and patriotic fervor, away from challenges including a clash with Elon Musk and a legal battle over his tariff authority.
Trump's actions also pushed the bounds even further on a second term that's been shattered norms repeatedly. He is more eager to satisfy his base and relishing the fight with Newsom, whom he belittles as "Newscum.'
"I watched Minneapolis burn,' Trump said Monday in reference to protests that rocked the city in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. "There's so many different places where we let it burn, we wanted to be politically correct, we wanted to be nice.'
Trump has refused to take the same approach. He's also indulged in strongman trappings more associated with autocrats such as the leaders of China and Russia, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, whose countries are known for parades featuring tanks, ballistic missiles and troops that past U.S. presidents have considered needlessly belligerent.
Police officers in riot gear stand during a demonstration following federal immigration operations in Los Angeles on Monday. |
AFP-Jiji
For the time being, attention remains squarely focused on Los Angeles, where Trump first ordered the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops in response to three days of protests over detentions by immigration authorities. Officials said it wasn't necessary and the soldiers would only get in the way.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the deployment of some 700 Marines — an escalation that raises the prospect of a clash between active-duty U.S. troops and American citizens.
David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the presence of the National Guard and Marines was a "shocking' development meant to deliberately spread chaos, confusion and fear.
"What we've seen is people exercising their First Amendment rights,' Leopold told Bloomberg Television. "That is what these troops are being sent out to suppress.'
In a news conference Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state is suing the administration, arguing that Trump overstepped his authority and unlawfully deployed the National Guard.
The moves have generated outrage among Democrats and some moderates, as well as charges of hypocrisy after Trump pardoned some 1,600 people convicted over their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"Let's not pretend Trump actually wants to help Los Angeles,' Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said in a social media post. "Trump is deploying the military on American soil to stoke MORE conflict and MORE violence.'
Demonstrators hold up signs in a protest against federal immigration sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. |
REUTERS
On Tuesday, Trump heads to North Carolina's Fort Bragg, an iconic installation whose name has become a rhetorical battleground of its own. The administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden renamed it "Fort Liberty' so the base would no longer celebrate its first namesake, Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general.
But then Hegseth changed it back as part of a campaign to undo perceived "woke' Biden initiatives, but this time commemorated Roland L. Bragg, who received the Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his service in World War II.
Hegseth, separately, was already scheduled to testify in Congress this week, beginning with a Tuesday House Appropriations Committee hearing, before the actions the administration took regarding the California protests.
Then, this weekend, Trump will realize a long-held aspiration with a military parade through the streets of Washington — a display of pomp that also falls on his 79th birthday.
"We're celebrating the army on Flag Day — and it's not my birthday,' Trump said Monday. "It is my birthday, but I'm not celebrating my birthday, I'm celebrating Flag Day. It happens to be the same day so I take a little heat, but Flag Day is the appropriate day.'
Army officials have said a major celebration — cost estimates for the parade run as high as $45 million, including potential damage to local infrastructure — was in the works even before Trump's election, given the significance of the service's 250th anniversary. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told members of the House Armed Services Committee that the event "will directly lead to a recruiting boom that will fill up our pipeline for the coming years.'
Yvonne Chiu, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview that Trump "wanted to be more provocative in the first term and now that he's got a second term, he's got his chance.'
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