Trump’s Grotesque Military Address
Trump’s Grotesque Military Address
The president yuks it up at Fort Bragg with his personal army and drools over the possibility of smashing protests in the capital.
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The catfight heard ’round the world seems to have fully sputtered out: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week,” Elon Musk tweeted shortly after 3 a.m. this morning. “They went too far.”
It’s unclear what early-morning intelligence Musk might have received to have made him reevaluate his former claims that Trump had been alarmingly close to Jeffrey Epstein and was now making the federal government cover that fact up. Must have been pretty convincing, though! Happy Wednesday.
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Less Donald, More George
by William Kristol
“It is safer,” the philosopher Leo Strauss cautioned, “to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.”
This week bids fair to be a low moment in American history, as Donald Trump chooses to reveal himself fully for what he is.
First, the president used protests against his mass deportation policy as an excuse to deploy national guard soldiers—activated against the wishes of the state’s governor and the city’s mayor—and then active-duty marines to the streets of Los Angeles. He also issued a presidential memorandum authorizing future domestic use of the U.S. military anywhere at any time he judges appropriate.
Then, in the Oval Office yesterday, the president was asked about the military parade he’s ordered for Saturday in Washington. President Trump will watch from on high, on a reviewing stand, as 150 military vehicles, including 28 tanks and 28 armored troop carriers, roll down Constitution Avenue.
Trump doesn’t want there to be any distraction from this grandiose and, I dare say, un-American spectacle. He’s not interested in any Americans nearby choosing to exercise their First Amendment rights. And so he warned: “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force. And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, these are people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”
Now, one reason Trump hasn’t heard about a protest in Washington may be that those who have encouraged hundreds of peaceful and patriotic “No Kings Day” demonstrations around the country have in fact urged protesters not to assemble in Washington. They want to avoid possible confrontations, so as to provide no excuse for Trump to use force.
Trump clearly wants such an excuse. He’s always admired the action of the Chinese government in Tiananmen Square in 1989: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”
Having embraced the power of strength against peaceful protests yesterday, Trump then flew to Fort Bragg. There he boasted in an unseemly, and I dare say again un-American, way of the power and strength of the U.S. Army. Trump spoke almost exclusively about power rather than principle, about strength rather than purpose. He also told the assembled soldiers various lies big and small, including that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” He urged them on to jeer the press, President Biden, and Democratic office holders in California.
Un-American once more.
But in line with Strauss’s injunction, I turn away from Trump to remind myself of another address to soldiers by an American president, though this one delivered before the speaker became president.
It was March 1783, and the Continental Army seemed near mutiny against the civil government over its failure to fulfill various commitments to the soldiers, including appropriating funds for their back pay. Matters were coming to a head, and on March 15 Gen. George Washington chose to directly address the threat of military rebellion in a speech to his officers in Newburgh, New York.
Washington argued eloquently and emotionally both against mutiny and against soldiers deserting their station. “This dreadful alternative, of either deserting our country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our arms against it . . . has something so shocking in it, that humanity revolts at the idea.”
A bit later in his address, Washington pulled out a letter from a member of Congress to read from it. He paused for a moment, and then reached into his pocket to take out a pair of reading glasses, which most of the officers had never seen him wear. Washington put them on. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”
This dramatic moment reportedly broke the fever of revolt. After Washington’s speech the officers voted to reject any appeals to mutiny or to desert, and simply asked Washington to negotiate with Congress to redress the wrongs they had suffered.
Washington’s speech concluded:
And let me conjure you, in the name of our common country—as you value your own sacred honor—as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our country, and who wickedly attempts to open the floodgates of civil discord, and deluge our rising empire in blood.
We have today such a man, a man “who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our country” and “open the floodgates of civil discord.” He’s our president.
And here’s the question before us: Is this now the country of Donald Trump? Or does it remain the country of George Washington?
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