President Trump has indicated he is backing down on threats to deploy federal troops to states that refuse to use the military to put down violent protesters but not before taking criticism from current and past defense officials who openly broke with his position.
“I don’t think we’ll have to,” Trump told former White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Newsmax TV Wednesday, referring to invoking the Insurrection Act to dispatch active-duty troops for riot control.
“We have very strong powers to do it. The National Guard is customary, and we have a very powerful National Guard, over 300,000 men and women, and we can do pretty much whatever we want as far as that,” he said. “But as far as going beyond that, sure, if it was necessary.”
On a leaked call Monday, Trump called governors “weak” and urged them, with the backing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, to call up more National Guard members to quell protests in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody.
Trump also said he would send in federal troops if they refused.
“If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he said.
On Wednesday morning at the Pentagon, Esper walked back his comments on the call to “dominate the battle space” of America’s streets, saying that military lexicon was inappropriate.
He also made a clear break with Trump’s posture with governors.
“I’ve always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations,” said Esper, a former member of the National Guard himself. “I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”
He added: “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.”
The National Guard reported Thursday that 32 states and the District of Columbia had called up more than 32,400 National Guard members to support the local law enforcement response to civil unrest.
The District of Columbia called up all 1,200 of its members and an additional 3,300 from 10 other states.
Additionally, federal active-duty troops called in from Fort Drum and Fort Bragg remained on alert within the National Capital Region as of Wednesday.
Criticism from former military leaders
Former military leaders decried the president for using harsh tactics to quell peaceful protesters at Lafayette Park so that he could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo opportunity Monday.
The most prominent was Trump’s first secretary of defense, four-star Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who resigned in 2018 after breaking with Trump on Syria policy.
“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis wrote in a statement for the Atlantic. “We do not need to militarize our response to protests.”
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” he added.
The Obama-era chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, also criticized the decision in an opinion piece for the Atlantic.
“It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church,” he wrote. “The United States has a long and, to be fair, sometimes troubled history of using the armed forces to enforce domestic laws.”
He continued: “We must, as citizens, address head-on the issue of police brutality and sustained injustices against the African American community. … And neither of these pursuits will be made easier or safer by an overly aggressive use of our military, active duty or National Guard.”
Heritage Foundation national security expert Steve Bucci told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s style was to speak first, not initially taking a firm policy position.
“President Trump tends to make these kind of statements publicly, and then that attracts a lot of feedback from outside the administration and from inside the administration, and then he usually adjusts,” he said. “Normal politicians spend lots of time running things up the mythical flagpole to see who salutes before they even make an announcement.”
It did not matter that Trump’s Monday comments with governors were meant to be private, Bucci said.
“I don’t think he makes any distinction between public and private comments, that’s not the way he operates,” he said. “So, going on his initial statement on anything is kind of a fool’s errand, because he doesn’t generally operate on what he says.”
