Trump alumni warn he could deploy troops against Americans

As protests swept the nation after the murder of George Floyd and some rioting broke out in Washington, President Donald Trump demanded in a White House meeting in June 2020 that 10,000 troops deploy to the capital, according to people familiar with the matter. The number, one of them said, seemingly was “pulled out of thin air” as he sought to counter any perception that he was weak.

The incident prompted a study in which Pentagon officials and others in the Trump administration reviewed how to address the president’s demand. They came back with a proposal to supplement federal police already based in Washington with a few thousand National Guard members; a battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division that could be summoned on short notice from North Carolina; and several hundred soldiers with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, a unit at nearby Fort Myer whose role is mostly ceremonial at Arlington National Cemetery.

But Trump never gave the final order to put active-duty soldiers in the streets.

“He wanted to do it. He was suggestive of it,” said one person familiar with that matter who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “But that’s also kind of typical of his decision-making. He knows that if he gives the order, he owns it.”

The active-duty troops got as close to Washington as nearby Fort Belvoir, Va., and other installations on the outskirts of the city. It was not the only time that Trump, as president, wanted to deploy the armed forces within the United States against the advice of civilian and military leaders. He also sent active-duty troops to bolster security at the southern border and sought military hardware for a ceremonial parade down Pennsylvania Avenue that ultimately became mostly an air show.

Now, with less than two weeks until Election Day, some of Trump’s most senior former advisers are warning Americans to take his militaristic impulses seriously. His longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, told the New York Times that he feels Trump meets the definition of “fascist,” expected personal loyalty from military leaders and spoke admiringly of Adolf Hitler.

“To use the U.S. military in terms of domestic law enforcement, it’s not the American way,” Kelly said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The fear is he will tell them to do something illegal, and that’s a really bad thing to do. And then you have generals resigning. And very possibly within the ranks, you have people refusing to do it. These guys are going to follow the law.”

In running to retake the White House, Trump has named his unfulfilled demands to deploy the military against civil unrest as one of his top regrets - and one he aims not to repeat. His allies have laid plans for him to do so by invoking emergency authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807.

“The next time, I’m not waiting,” he said at a March 13, 2023, campaign speech in Davenport, Iowa. In a Fox News interview Oct. 13, he said the military could handle his domestic political opponents such as congressional Democrats and election protesters, whom he deemed “the enemy from within.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that she agreed with Kelly’s assessment of Trump as a fascist, and she picked up Kelly’s remarks to emphasize her campaign’s closing message portraying the former president as unstable and dangerous.

“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who worked with him side-by-side in the Oval Office, and in the Situation Room,” she told reporters. “In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there.”

The Trump campaign denied Kelly’s account. Some allies have cast doubt on Kelly’s recollection and taken exception to references to Hitler. Trump denied praising Hitler in remarks to reporters in Las Vegas on Thursday and walked away from a question about whether he would use the military against political opponents.

Trump and his former national security adviser Keith Kellogg, who has remained close to him, accused Kelly of lying in social media posts.

“They can speak up, but the criticism to me doesn’t match the reality of what happened during Trump’s period,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said in an interview. “I’m sort of offended by that kind of stuff - you can be a critic of Trump, but there were no concentration camps.”

As president, Trump often sought to use military force in a bid to crack down on perceived problems. His advisers headed off many of those efforts, as they questioned the legality, common sense or political fallout of doing so, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Trump’s walk to St. John’s Church across Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, caused outcry because of the use of force on protesters just before it and because Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were photographed with him in the square. Esper later recalled in his memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” feeling like he had been duped, while Milley apologized, saying appearing in battle fatigues during such a partisan moment was “a mistake that I have learned from.”

A person close to both men said they began seeing Trump in darker terms after that incident and faced significant criticism from others in the military. Neither repaired their relationship with him.

Esper, asked about those deliberations Wednesday, referred a reporter to the account in his book. In it, he said he wanted to get the active-duty soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division back to their home base in North Carolina “as quickly as possible.”

“At this point, even if we were wrong and violence spiked in the city, I didn’t want active-duty forces quickly available to the president,” Esper wrote. “We had managed to keep them out of the District so far. Guard forces were now flowing into D.C. in healthy numbers, so I decided to send all active-duty units home. I didn’t inform the White House about these decisions either. I couldn’t trust they wouldn’t reverse my decision.”

He also recounted Trump being incensed by the defense secretary telling reporters during a news conference that he did not support using the Insurrection Act to quell the unrest. Trump, he wrote, “launched into a tirade” when he saw him next and accused Esper of betrayal.

Esper and Milley objected to Trump’s interest in using the Insurrection Act, saying the military should not be used except as a last resort or facing an actual uprising, according to a memoir by Trump’s attorney general at the time, William P. Barr. Barr said he agreed that the emergency authority was not necessary, and Trump decided to place Barr in charge of the federal response, with the Pentagon’s support, rather than assigning Milley to deal with the unrest.

“He appeared to want the military to play the lead role in reacting to the rioting,” Barr wrote. (Barr has said he’ll support the Republican nominee.)

Former administration officials said Trump wanted to send military to cities where he believed crime was out of control as well as to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump did send active-duty troops to the border, but they were mostly limited to stringing razor wire in support of law enforcement.

“Let’s just send the troops in to catch them!” Trump said in one Oval Office meeting in 2018, according to an attendee.

Kelly and others have raised concerns that Trump would want the military to help him round up undocumented immigrants. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has proposed detaining migrants on military bases and flying them out of the country on military planes - ideas that Pentagon officials resisted in Trump’s first term. Miller has also suggested ordering National Guard troops from Republican-led states into neighboring states governed by Democrats.

“The idea of using the military to protect the border was on his own mind,” said John Bolton, his former national security adviser.

In a second term, Trump has laid the groundwork for sending more troops to the border, frequently calling undocumented immigration an “invasion.” The Center for Renewing America, a right-wing think tank that participated in the Project 2025 coalition proposing policy and personnel for the next Republican administration, published a policy brief in July presenting a legal argument for deploying troops to the border.

The organization’s president, former Trump budget director Russ Vought, said the same legal argument could apply to deploying the military for domestic law and order, according to an undercover video made by British journalists pretending to be donors.

The group also discussed planning for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications, as The Post first reported in November.

A spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s very rare to actually put troops in the street. For Trump, that would be the first thing he would think of doing, instead of going through the traditional pattern,” Bolton said.

Trump frequently talked to aides about how frustrated he was with the Defense Department during his first term in office, several current advisers said. He has privately said he would view the Pentagon and the Justice Department as his two most important staffing priorities, these people said.

He also clashed with Pentagon officials about the role of the National Guard, as they raised alarm about deploying in some domestic situations, and frustrated them by floating the Insurrection Act.

Trump would complain sometimes about how “no one at the Pentagon would do what they’re told to do,” in the words of one former senior administration official.

Bolton said Trump began his administration by calling military leaders “my generals,” but then would laugh at the term sarcastically, because they were so resistant to his impulses.

“Trump wants generals who are going to perform at his beck and call,” said Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser for Trump.

Trump’s past actions and recent rhetoric have prompted some critics to demand that senior officials who served during the Trump administration speak out more forcefully against the former president.

In a viral video posted Wednesday, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said that to break through pro-Trump disinformation, retired generals such as Milley and Jim Mattis, who served in the Marine Corps and then as Trump’s defense secretary, need to “get out and state publicly” that they believe Trump is a fascist, after privately doing so in accounts that author and Post associate editor Bob Woodward recently recounted.

“We need those two men, who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies of the United States foreign and domestic, to come out and state exactly how they feel about former president Trump,” said Eaton, who’s now the head of the liberal veterans group VoteVets.

Mattis and Milley did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts on civil-military affairs have raised reservations about how political activists have sought to capitalize on and pressure retired generals, who have often adhered to a norm that they will not criticize a commander in chief under whom they served.

Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University, said Kelly and Mattis - as retired generals who went on to be political appointees - have more room to navigate than Milley and retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., another Joint Chiefs chairman under Trump.

“They have to be careful and weigh what they do now against the possible damage or impact that it would have on future military leaders who could serve in a Trump administration,” Feaver said. “The more political they are, the more that Trump will distrust everyone who worked with them.”

Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.