Donald Trump buried a sinister message in his speech to generals when he spoke about an “invasion from within,” one of the military’s most distinguished leaders has warned.
Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling—a decorated combat hero— told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump had opened a dangerous new path for the armed forces when he spoke to 800 generals, admirals and their most senior enlisted advisors at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.
Hertling warned that Trump’s idea to use “dangerous” American cities as “training grounds” for the military during a meandering diatribe Tuesday was actually more sinister and dangerous than it first appeared.
Troops are not trained to perform police activities unless they intend to become military police, Hertling pointed out.
“Breaking that razor’s edge into policing activities, again, is contrary to the Constitution and contrary to our laws,” he told Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty.
“It shouldn’t be done,” Hertling went on. “But what I heard the president say yesterday was an implied remark that he was telling everyone in that room is: Be prepared to do that. And that only happens once an insurrection occurs, like during the Civil War.”
After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abruptly summoned some 800 generals from all over the globe to Quantico for the bizarre pep rally in front of a stage modeled on the set of the 1970 movie Patton, Trump took the stage to hammer the notion that “defending the homeland is the military’s first and most important priority,” citing Democratic strongholds like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles as “unsafe places.”
“We are under invasion from within. We’re stopping it very quickly,” he said. “We’re not going to let this happen.”
Trump argued that his deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C. “solved” the city’s woes. But a federal judge has ruled that his similar crackdown in Los Angeles in June was illegal, writing in a scathing 52-page opinion that the move essentially created “a national police force with the president as its chief.”
The deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles set off a firestorm of protests that saw tense clashes between troops and demonstrators. In D.C., however, the reception to Guard members was relatively muted, in part because soldiers were tasked with picking up trash for “beautification” efforts—despite Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” in the city.
“So unless he’s prepared to stoke that kind of insurrection by further dividing the American people and it turns to violence, soldiers are the means of last resort for any kind of police activity, primarily because they’re not trained to do things like that and secondarily because it’s against the law,” Hertling said.
The retired general recalled how he pushed back against “illegal or immoral” orders throughout his career.
“In each one of those cases, my bosses—higher-ranking officials—took my input, said, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. This is illegal. Let’s change this order,’” he said. “I’m not sure we’re going to get the same kind of action from the current civilian chain of command in both the White House and the Department of Defense.”
The White House told the Daily Beast that Trump is “rightfully deploying our U.S. military to help protect law-abiding citizens from threats within our homeland.”
“President Trump was elected with a resounding mandate to end the violent crime crisis, which was enabled by Joe Biden’s incompetence as the… Daily Beast cheered him on,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.
The Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment.
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