Donald Trump seems to relish threatening Americans with the U.S. Army.
In 2020, he threatened to send U.S. soldiers into American cities to stop the protests over the murder of George Floyd. Last week, he said that the “enemy from within” — apparently referring to those who might take to the streets if he wins the upcoming election, but possibly to his political opponents, based on his follow-up comments — “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
The “enemy from within” threat set off an uproar, but what many people fail to realize is how often American presidents have deployed the U.S. army domestically for justifiable reasons.
In 1794, President George Washington sent a federal militia to stop the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent tax revolt by farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania that threatened the new nation’s stability. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant sent members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment from the frontier to the South to put down the Ku Klux Klan’s insurrection. During the Civil Rights Era, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy used federal troops to enforce court-ordered desegregation of schools and universities in the South.
But these presidents only took such momentous steps as a last resort. In 1962, Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett (D) defied a court order to admit a Black man, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. After fruitless negotiations with Barnett, Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and authorized the Secretary of Defense to use the “armed forces of the United States if necessary” to admit Meredith to the university.
Kennedy explained to the nation that he deeply regretted this decision but that “persuasion and conciliation” with Barnett had been “tried and exhausted.” Ultimately, 30,000 elite Army paratroopers were needed so that Meredith could safely register for classes in the face of a mob of thousands throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails at federal officers.
For Trump, strongman rhetoric and tactics are the first resort. Contrast Kennedy’s dignified, solemn approach with what Trump told governors during the Floyd demonstrations. Even though more than 20 states had already activated their National Guards, he demanded a “much tougher” approach: “You have to dominate,” he said. “If you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to arrest people.”
A few hours later, the Trump administration ordered federal law enforcement officials to clear largely peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square near the White House, which they did with National Guard Humvees, mounted policemen, rubber bullets, smoke bombs and batons. Trump later walked through the square and held a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in which he held a Bible aloft.
But for the adamant and public opposition of Secretary of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Trump would likely have also invoked the Insurrection Act — which authorizes the president to deploy the armed forces to suppress a rebellion or domestic violence, or to enforce the law in certain circumstances — and sent soldiers into American cities. Following Trump’s “enemy from within” threat, Esper warned that the public should take such threats “seriously.” It’s a good bet that there would be no Espers in a second Trump administration.
Trump’s authority under the Insurrection Act is not subject to congressional approval and is largely immune from judicial second-guessing. Wielding the country’s armed forces against the “enemy from within” would satisfy three of Trump’s darkest impulses: to “dominate,” to seek retribution against his opponents and to emulate Vladimir Putin.
And, as he is demonstrating on the campaign trail (for example, his bizarre, vulgar remarks about Arnold Palmer), Trump’s impulse control is deteriorating daily.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”