00:00This is apropos. America is under invasion from within. Donald Trump has been emphasizing his vision of using the U.S. armed forces for domestic purposes after summoning hundreds of senior military officers to an unusual gathering in Virginia.
00:19In a rambling address, the president said several Democratic-run cities would be used as training grounds for the armed forces, while his defense secretary claimed that the military was too focused on woke ideas, saying it needed a major shake-up.
00:35Karis Garland has the details.
00:38We became the woke department, but not anymore.
00:42Setting the tone for a rare call-up of top U.S. military brass from across the globe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to, quote, politically correct leadership that he said had infected his department.
00:57No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. As I've said before, and will say again, we are done with that.
01:08The Pentagon has undergone radical changes since Donald Trump took office, including firings and banning books from academy libraries.
01:18Hegseth defended his firing of more than a dozen military leaders, saying they were part of a broken culture.
01:25He also announced a tightening of fitness and grooming standards.
01:29It's tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops.
01:34Simply put, if you do not meet the male-level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don't want to shave and look professional, it's time for a new position.
01:45Donald Trump, who only announced the previous day that he would speak at the event, told reporters as he was leaving that he would fire military leaders on the spot if he didn't like them.
01:56The president then opened with a joke as he took the stage.
01:59You can do anything you want, and if you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room.
02:04Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.
02:07In a rambling speech, Trump praised his own tariff and border policies, but he also spoke of his administration's plans to send National Guard troops to a host of U.S. cities after an initial operation in Washington, D.C.,
02:20signalling a revamp of defense priorities, the president cited an invasion and enemy from within.
02:27We are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly.
02:31Washington, D.C. went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month.
02:39The president has been questioned over the cost of flying the military commanders to the meeting as a federal shutdown looms,
02:46though Trump defended it as a good thing.
02:48Well, for more, we're joined now by Mark Cancey, a retired Marine colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
02:59Thanks so much for being with us on the program.
03:02We saw there Donald Trump talking about a war from within when he's talking about crime and immigration in the U.S.
03:10Observers describing all of that as darkly authoritarian.
03:14What did you make of it?
03:15This is the standard Trump speech.
03:21He gives the same speech to every audience, whether it's senior military officers, whether it's a campaign rally,
03:27or whether it's the General Assembly of the United Nations.
03:31So what he said was not unexpected.
03:35It was quite inappropriate for a group of military officers.
03:39But I said, this is what this is a standard speech.
03:41He gives that to everyone.
03:43And this rhetoric about attacks from within, about domestic terrorism, that is also standard Trump.
03:52He has signed executive orders designating cartels and domestic terrorism as terrorism threats in Vanta.
04:02So that was not a surprise.
04:05The one thing that caught everyone's attention was this statement about combat training in the cities.
04:11Yeah.
04:11And will those commanders be concerned at all by some of the remarks that they heard today,
04:17particularly when it comes to having those troops in Democratic-run cities?
04:21The troops are going to a variety of cities, most of which are Democratic-run, but not all of them.
04:29So far, it's been okay from the military point of view.
04:34Huge issues on a domestic political policy perspective.
04:39What Trump meant by this statement, which was really an offhanded comment in the middle of this, as you described, very rambling speech.
04:50What he meant was unclear.
04:51You know, taken one way, it could mean the authorization for the use of lethal force.
04:56That would be a huge problem because the military is not trained on dealing with citizens,
05:01on dealing, using lethal force against U.S. citizens.
05:07That's the job of law enforcement.
05:10On the other hand, he could just be talking about deploying to other cities, doing jobs in another location.
05:20For example, if you're a truck driver, doing truck driving, driving trucks in Portland or Memphis rather than on your home base,
05:28that would not be concerning.
05:31What the military has done in cities so far has been relatively benign.
05:37That is, they haven't used lethal force.
05:40They've let police do the law enforcement.
05:42They've backed up police and done a variety of support jobs, including here in Washington, D.C., doing landscaping.
05:49So we'll see how Secretary Hegseth implements this and whether it's some matter for concern or whether it's more of what we've been seeing.
05:59Is there a lot of discomfort and unease within the ranks of the military itself about what the Trump administration's policies are
06:07when it comes to the armed forces and perhaps the challenges that lay ahead?
06:15I would not overestimate the unease in the military ranks.
06:22What we saw here, I think, sums up what they've been seeing.
06:27That is, a lot of what Hegseth said resonates well.
06:30I mean, when he talks about excellence, when he talks about high standards, when he talks about fitness, that resonates with senior officers.
06:39And so far, many of the missions are not things that the military would probably have chosen, but they're within what the military has done in the past.
06:50So I think the concerns are about where it might go rather than what they're actually doing now.
06:58And what did you make of Pete Hegseth's comments about combatants having to meet the highest standards, male standards particularly, when it comes to physical fitness tests?
07:08Does that mean that women in the future are not going to be able to serve, as he's almost acknowledged in those remarks?
07:15Pete Hegseth would say no.
07:19And his argument is that when he speaks about the highest male standards, he's talking about particularly combat units, that is, the infantry.
07:31He makes the argument, an unreasonable one, that everyone should meet the same standard, and it should be a high standard because of the demands of combat troops.
07:40When you talk about support troops, it's different that the physical demands are not as high, and those are demands that women could relatively easily meet.
07:53And there'll be some women in the infantry who continue to meet their standards.
07:56There are some very tough women out there, probably just not as many as maybe before.
08:00And why did the U.S. president, do you think, want to have all these senior personnel in the one place?
08:06And why was there so much secrecy about what was going to be discussed and so much speculation in advance of this gathering?
08:14Well, those are great questions.
08:16I think many people got to the end of these two speeches and were scratching their heads saying,
08:20why did they all have to come to Quantico to hear this?
08:23It was all unclassified.
08:25They could have done this on a classified video teleconference.
08:29They could have even done it on Zoom because there was no classified information.
08:34The Pentagon put out a reason.
08:36They said that Secretary Hagseth wanted to see his commanders face to face.
08:42People have also speculated he did it because he can.
08:44He's a secretary, and if he says, come to me, the officers come.
08:49Keep in mind, this was Secretary Hagseth's meeting that he called.
08:53The president was a last-minute, literally almost, addition to the meeting.
08:57I mean, you say the scale, the timeline, the lack of a clear agenda in advance, they were all unprecedented.
09:04So just how unusual was this gathering in and of itself?
09:08Well, it was unprecedented, and as you say, three things made it unprecedented.
09:14One was the size.
09:16You could see the size of that auditorium.
09:18Hundreds of the most senior military officers along with their senior enlisted advisors.
09:24There have been many routine meetings of general officers, but they're much smaller.
09:32The combatant commanders, for example, come to Washington twice a year.
09:35There are 11 of them, not 2, 3, 400.
09:39The other thing was the short timeline.
09:41This was maybe discussed on classified systems for a couple of weeks out, but they came together very quickly.
09:49Typically, conferences like this, particularly with general officers, are planned months, even years in advance.
09:55And then there was the lack of an agenda.
09:57And what we saw was what happens if you don't put an agenda out there.
10:01A lot of people filled in that agenda with ideas about officer purges, talk about the blood wetting with the firing of officers and possibly requirements for loyalty oaths.
10:20None of that happened, but there was a lot of speck.
10:23So you put those three things together.
10:24This was unprecedented.
10:26And what about the optics, Mark?
10:28With the federal shutdown looming in the U.S., what about the courts?
10:31What about the cost of flying all of these commanders in to Virginia and the disruption, if there was any, to daily operations?
10:41First question on costs has come up, particularly for people who question the need for such a conference.
10:50I did a rough calculation, and I think the costs are in the sort of six to eight million dollar range, in addition to some opportunity costs.
10:59Now, compared to a federal budget of a trillion dollars, that's not very much.
11:05On the other hand, if you think that this meeting was unnecessary, then it's a very high amount.
11:11You also raise a question about bringing all these officers to Quantico and what that does to commands around the world.
11:16And it does disrupt them.
11:18And there's a little risk that goes with it.
11:20Although I would not overemphasize it, officers came here, their deputies stepped up, their deputies are very highly qualified.
11:28And these officers go out of town frequently, so it's not unusual that the deputy would take over.
11:35The little risk that occurs is because it's happened globally.
11:38And acting commanders are often a bit hesitant to make big decisions because they want to leave those to the actual commander.
11:46So there's a little risk.
11:47I wouldn't overemphasize it.
11:49And at a time of obviously global concern about actual conflicts in many regions around the world,
11:55why this focus when it comes to the Trump administration on the culture wars?
12:00It's something we see time and time again with Donald Trump.
12:05Hegseth sees these two issues as related.
12:08He sees the culture wars as strengthening the warfighting capabilities of the military.
12:16He wants to focus the military, as he says, on warfighting, on standards, on training.
12:23So to him, it's all the same effort.
12:27Mark, thanks so much for being with us this evening.
12:30We do appreciate your time.
12:31That's Mark Kansian, retired Marine colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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