President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wasted a lot of the military’s money and the valuable time of nearly 1,000 top offices of the armed forces who were ordered to leave their posts around the world and convene at a base in Virginia to hear two stupid and un-American speeches by Hegseth and Trump.
The defense secretary, who never went beyond being an Army major and now holds his position exclusively because Trump found him to be a decent enough TV showman, had the gall to tell a room full of top military officers that they and their colleagues had been potentially promoted as a result of woke or DEI as opposed to merit.
Hegseth continued his misunderstanding of modern militaries by denigrating women and others who did not conform to his made-for-TV ideal of an army of strong, savage men, trotting out his obsession with what he calls the “warrior spirit.” Hegseth made that sound quite concerningly like an entreaty to become comfortable ignoring U.S. and international law by decrying “politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement” and multiple times reiterating that the role of the military was, in his view, mainly to kill enemies.
That Hegseth and the White House expect to command active duty troops to engage in illegal activity has already been to some degree established by their strikes against what no one disputes are civilian vessels in the Caribbean. Even if these destroyed boats were, as the administration contends, ferrying drug smugglers, there’s no authorization to use military lethal force on alleged criminals who pose no threat to service members, and neither Hegseth nor any other Trump official has even tried to present one.
It now seems like this is what Hegseth expects in other contexts: troops obeying orders to use overwhelming force, even when it is inappropriate or flatly illegal. That is wrong. The military has a duty to obey only lawful orders. Carrying out illegal orders is itself illegal.
Still, it was only when Trump himself addressed the assembled brass that the full dimensions and magnitude of this meeting took shape. Trump has already deployed active duty military, almost certainly unlawfully, to multiple cities around the country, saying last week that he was authorizing soldiers to use “full force” in Portland, Ore., which he called, laughably, a war zone.
In this rambling speech, Trump was the most explicit he’s been yet about his intentions, saying the military could use cities as a “training ground” and attack “the enemy from within.”
The outrages come every day and it’s hard to focus public attention on each one, but this sounds very much like the president of the United States dragging military leaders from all across the world to tell them to be prepared to fight and, per the natural implication, kill people in cities around the country. This is not political theater or normal policy disagreement but an incredibly dangerous effort to turn the military against their oath to the Constitution and to protect American democracy.
Fortunately, we don’t think it will work. Trump’s efforts notwithstanding, neither he nor Hegseth appear particularly well-respected among a military that, despite their best efforts, remains diverse ideologically and culturally and take their oaths seriously. For any servicemembers on the fence, a reminder: following illegal orders carries personal liability.
